Latest news with #WreckedMyLife
The Age
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
Still waiting for Mr Darcy? He might be closer than you think
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a straight single woman in possession of a dating profile must be in want of a miracle. Ghosting. Breadcrumbing. A risky double- or triple-text followed by the anxious wait for a response. Love languages and attachment-style quizzes. How to embrace the divine feminine, red nail theory, black cat energy. Red flags, green flags, beige flags. The endless swipe, swipe, swipe into the abyss, and ultimately, the ick. Countless rules and tricks and loopholes – did Lizzy Bennet have to put up with all of this? Would she have? Or would she have hitched up her skirts, told Darcy to shove it, and gone off to get a job in a laundry somewhere, instead of suffering the seemingly inescapable indignities of modern dating? As this winter turns bitter and the instinct to burrow dials up to 11, most Friday nights, you can find me swaddled in a fleece blanket burrito on the couch, getting all my romantic fulfilment from fictional men written by women. 'I'm not into Uber sex,' says Agathe, the protagonist of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life: a French film in which an idealistic writer gets swept into her own Austen-style romance in the English countryside. 'I'm not living in the right century.' As if on cue, my phone lights up beside me. It's a picture message from this guy I met on an app more than a decade ago, but never got around to meeting in person. I know without even unlocking my phone that he has sent me a photo of his semi-erect penis. I turn my phone over. I turn the movie up. It can be tempting, in the ashes of yet another failed talking stage or mildly traumatic situationship, to want to retreat into fiction. Romcoms never leave you on 'read'. Romance novels never gave anyone an antibiotic-resistant UTI. Stay lost in a world of costume dramas long enough, and you begin to wonder if dating wasn't easier two centuries ago. Back then, all you had to do to be some hunky aristocrat's manic pixie dream girl was to be refreshingly outspoken, broke, and crap at the pianoforte. The whole criteria for being someone's Prince Charming was to simply not have a secret fiancee. The thought of purchasing a love spell from an Etsy witch would send half these characters into a coma. But some nagging familiarity dogs me as I enter my fourth hour of Regency-era romance, and it's not because I've seen these films before. It's because I've lived them. When I was 18, I met some version of Captain Wentworth, the main love interest in Persuasion. My Wentworth was as gorgeous and impulsive as the original, with a Brummie accent that made him read dangerous and sexy, and tattoos from his ankles to his earlobes to guarantee that my mother would never approve. Dating in Melbourne in 2025 is brutal, but it wasn't much better two centuries ago. When we couldn't make our relationship work, young love and gap years as fleeting as they are, I put an ocean between us and yearned from afar for a decade. Life may have moved on for us both, but a part of me is still waiting for my Wentworth's return; braced, I think, for a long, long email from him that never comes. And throughout the second half of my 20s, I found myself tangled up in an emotional affair with a man who belonged to someone else. Though it hadn't started nefariously – it was a friends-to-lovers trope if I ever saw one – it dragged on too long, and now, each time I revisit Sense and Sensibility, Mr Ferrars' stuttering charm recalls late-night conversations I'd sooner forget. I wish I could sit down for brunch and mimosas with Ms Steele and have both of us deflate with the relief that neither of us ended up with the wrong guy. Say nothing of the countless Mr Wickhams in my rearview mirror: roguish, dashing, manipulative, the perfect person to project all my limerence onto. Don't even mention all the grinning, smooth-brained Mr Bingleys I've swiped through: the golden retriever boyfriend personified, most content when chasing a ball or his family's approval. The flighty and deceitful Mr Willoughbys with their hidden agendas, the charming and scheming Mr Elliots – and all the many, many, many earnest and embarrassing Mr Collinses who fancy themselves a Darcy. I've tried it on with them all, learning nothing except that when it's not right, it's always wrong. Hey Siri, play Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter. Loading This year is Jane Austen's 250th birthday, and somehow, she is as relevant as she has ever been. Each modern adaptation proves it: Bridget Jones' Diary and all her sequels, Clueless, and – because I have no taste (see my romantic history above) – even Netflix's Persuasion are delicious little treats on which I can't keep from bingeing. Like Taylor Swift songs and horoscopes, it's so easy to take Austen's work and lay it like a filter over your own life, tracing the similarities and disregarding the differences, until it feels as though it was written just for you. Because dating in Melbourne in 2025 is brutal, but it wasn't much better two centuries ago. At least women's ability to stay out of poverty is no longer tied to how well they cater to the male gaze. At least we can vote. Now, eloping with a hot scoundrel won't ruin your life; it's just fodder for your writing career. (Just kidding.) (Kind of.) But I have a confession to make: deep down, the misguided romantic in me still wants something phenomenally unrealistic. Despite a decade of disappointment and mortifying stories, despite living my life according to the Bechdel Test, despite endless anecdata about unsatisfying (if not downright dangerous) heterosexual relationships, sometimes I eschew all my hyper-independence and can admit – to you and only you – that I would really like a romantic hero to stride across a foggy moor and rescue me from myself. I want Paul Rudd to call me gorgeous and annoying, then kiss me on a staircase, like he did to Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Sometimes, when my dopamine drops and nobody is looking, I even get lonely enough to fall back into the embrace of that unholy trio: Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. All the archetypes are there, too. Fred Wentworth, 31 Six foot with a six-pack on six figures, since apparently that matters. George Wickham, 26 Looking for my Tinderella. NO GOLDDIGGERS (I do not have any gold to dig). Eddie Ferrars, 24 Ethically non-monogamist entrepreneur. Me and my missus are looking for a third. Colonel Brandon is there too. In Sense and Sensibility, he's an older gentleman who falls in love with giddy, flighty Marianne, and waits patiently for her to see through Mr Willoughby's charade. These days, he's the leathery fifty-something who exclusively dates 20-year-olds because they're 'less complicated' and 'more sexually adventurous' than women his own age. Robert Ferrars, from the same novel, was always second best to his brother. Now, his profile pictures are exclusively group shots, leaving you to wonder – hope – if he's the good-looking one in the crowd. William Elliot, sexy layabout and heir to the Elliot estate in Persuasion, would have half a dozen catfish profiles on sugar baby websites, seeking a wealthy Mrs Robinson figure to fund his comfortable lifestyle. Women aren't immune to this, by the way. Every delusional, self-important woman – including me – believes herself to be a sensible and headstrong Lizzy Bennet but is actually a giddy Lydia, or a socially inept Miss Bates who mistakes herself for an it-girl like Emma Woodhouse. We all know a Charlotte Lucas or two or 10, who, despite deserving the world, wound up deep in the suburbs, cleaning up after Mr Collins. Like Anne Elliot before us, we've all wondered if our first love might show up on our wedding day to speak now or forever hold his peace. You either die an Emma or you live long enough to see yourself become a Mrs Bennet. I'm sure that if I'd ever made it through Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, I'd spot parallels between Fanny Price and Catherine Morland and all the women I know, too. Times may change, but people rarely do. Funny how the red-pilled hivemind fantasise about returning to traditional values. You can't get much more traditional than the 18th century, and all those women ever did was marry for money and status. If I match with Kevin, 33, do I get an estate in Toorak and 4000 a year, too? But no matter how many of these characters I meet in real life, no matter how many times I've found myself living out the plot of Austen's novels, it never ends the way I've been taught to expect it to. That's the thing about books and films: they make you forget that the story doesn't end after the acknowledgments. Surely Lizzy and Darcy would be at one another's throats within a week. Emma and Knightley's lust would fade and they would fall right back into their bickering sibling dynamic soon enough, depressing them and creeping everyone else out. Wentworth, red-pilled and resentful, would throw his hard-earned success and Anne's passive classism back in her face each time she asked him to unload the dishwasher. There are happy endings, and then there are happily ever afters. So why do I still believe? My relationships with all of Austen's archetypes may have eventually broken down, but not because those guys were awful (although most of them were), or because I was the whole problem (although often I was). It wasn't because they were frogs playing princes, or because I'm a sidekick convinced she's a protagonist. I'm not sensible, patient Anne Elliot. I'm not an effervescent Emma Woodhouse, or rational and cautious Elinor Dashwood. There's nothing I wouldn't give to be Cher Horowitz, but then, I'm not as endearingly messy as Bridget Jones, either – but someone is. My Wickham is someone else's Wentworth. For every Mr Elton seeking his Miss Hawkins, there's a serious and steady Knightley waiting to be scandalised and delighted by his Emma. Isn't it so nice to believe, however foolishly, that the great big romance of our lives is just a swipe and a few plot twists away? I saw a psychic last week and she confirmed that I still have a few big love stories ahead of me. She also told me that I'm about to come into great wealth and that my late dog is running around the afterlife in a bow tie, so I'm wont to trust every word out of her mouth. Argumentative and judgmental as I am – in an endearing way, I swear – I'd like to believe that the universe has laid a path for me that leads to Mr Darcy. I've been waiting 30 years. Someone tall and awkward, moody and quippy, difficult to impress but unendingly loyal, socially confused, terrible at parties – wait, am I describing my dream man, or myself? While I wait for him to show up, if he ever does, there are endless adaptations and modern retellings to occupy my Friday nights. A little delusion keeps hope alive. Here's the real silver lining. Although my life doesn't much resemble those of Austen's protagonists – no bonnets, no trips to Bath for the sea cure – I do have something better; something her heroines dreamed of. Despite disappointments and unsolicited dick pics, my story belongs to me. I have my own money, my own home, a full and wonderful life that doesn't hinge on marriage or inherited wealth. I'm not a piece of fruit left rotting in the sun just because I haven't made my way to Pemberley yet. Whether I meet 'the one' tomorrow or spend my whole life fostering dogs and watching period pieces, I'll be fine, and so will you. I can be – I have always been – my very own Mr Darcy.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Still waiting for Mr Darcy? He might be closer than you think
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a straight single woman in possession of a dating profile must be in want of a miracle. Ghosting. Breadcrumbing. A risky double- or triple-text followed by the anxious wait for a response. Love languages and attachment-style quizzes. How to embrace the divine feminine, red nail theory, black cat energy. Red flags, green flags, beige flags. The endless swipe, swipe, swipe into the abyss, and ultimately, the ick. Countless rules and tricks and loopholes – did Lizzy Bennet have to put up with all of this? Would she have? Or would she have hitched up her skirts, told Darcy to shove it, and gone off to get a job in a laundry somewhere, instead of suffering the seemingly inescapable indignities of modern dating? As this winter turns bitter and the instinct to burrow dials up to 11, most Friday nights, you can find me swaddled in a fleece blanket burrito on the couch, getting all my romantic fulfilment from fictional men written by women. 'I'm not into Uber sex,' says Agathe, the protagonist of Jane Austen Wrecked My Life: a French film in which an idealistic writer gets swept into her own Austen-style romance in the English countryside. 'I'm not living in the right century.' As if on cue, my phone lights up beside me. It's a picture message from this guy I met on an app more than a decade ago, but never got around to meeting in person. I know without even unlocking my phone that he has sent me a photo of his semi-erect penis. I turn my phone over. I turn the movie up. It can be tempting, in the ashes of yet another failed talking stage or mildly traumatic situationship, to want to retreat into fiction. Romcoms never leave you on 'read'. Romance novels never gave anyone an antibiotic-resistant UTI. Stay lost in a world of costume dramas long enough, and you begin to wonder if dating wasn't easier two centuries ago. Back then, all you had to do to be some hunky aristocrat's manic pixie dream girl was to be refreshingly outspoken, broke, and crap at the pianoforte. The whole criteria for being someone's Prince Charming was to simply not have a secret fiancee. The thought of purchasing a love spell from an Etsy witch would send half these characters into a coma. But some nagging familiarity dogs me as I enter my fourth hour of Regency-era romance, and it's not because I've seen these films before. It's because I've lived them. When I was 18, I met some version of Captain Wentworth, the main love interest in Persuasion. My Wentworth was as gorgeous and impulsive as the original, with a Brummie accent that made him read dangerous and sexy, and tattoos from his ankles to his earlobes to guarantee that my mother would never approve. Dating in Melbourne in 2025 is brutal, but it wasn't much better two centuries ago. When we couldn't make our relationship work, young love and gap years as fleeting as they are, I put an ocean between us and yearned from afar for a decade. Life may have moved on for us both, but a part of me is still waiting for my Wentworth's return; braced, I think, for a long, long email from him that never comes. And throughout the second half of my 20s, I found myself tangled up in an emotional affair with a man who belonged to someone else. Though it hadn't started nefariously – it was a friends-to-lovers trope if I ever saw one – it dragged on too long, and now, each time I revisit Sense and Sensibility, Mr Ferrars' stuttering charm recalls late-night conversations I'd sooner forget. I wish I could sit down for brunch and mimosas with Ms Steele and have both of us deflate with the relief that neither of us ended up with the wrong guy. Say nothing of the countless Mr Wickhams in my rearview mirror: roguish, dashing, manipulative, the perfect person to project all my limerence onto. Don't even mention all the grinning, smooth-brained Mr Bingleys I've swiped through: the golden retriever boyfriend personified, most content when chasing a ball or his family's approval. The flighty and deceitful Mr Willoughbys with their hidden agendas, the charming and scheming Mr Elliots – and all the many, many, many earnest and embarrassing Mr Collinses who fancy themselves a Darcy. I've tried it on with them all, learning nothing except that when it's not right, it's always wrong. Hey Siri, play Manchild by Sabrina Carpenter. Loading This year is Jane Austen's 250th birthday, and somehow, she is as relevant as she has ever been. Each modern adaptation proves it: Bridget Jones' Diary and all her sequels, Clueless, and – because I have no taste (see my romantic history above) – even Netflix's Persuasion are delicious little treats on which I can't keep from bingeing. Like Taylor Swift songs and horoscopes, it's so easy to take Austen's work and lay it like a filter over your own life, tracing the similarities and disregarding the differences, until it feels as though it was written just for you. Because dating in Melbourne in 2025 is brutal, but it wasn't much better two centuries ago. At least women's ability to stay out of poverty is no longer tied to how well they cater to the male gaze. At least we can vote. Now, eloping with a hot scoundrel won't ruin your life; it's just fodder for your writing career. (Just kidding.) (Kind of.) But I have a confession to make: deep down, the misguided romantic in me still wants something phenomenally unrealistic. Despite a decade of disappointment and mortifying stories, despite living my life according to the Bechdel Test, despite endless anecdata about unsatisfying (if not downright dangerous) heterosexual relationships, sometimes I eschew all my hyper-independence and can admit – to you and only you – that I would really like a romantic hero to stride across a foggy moor and rescue me from myself. I want Paul Rudd to call me gorgeous and annoying, then kiss me on a staircase, like he did to Alicia Silverstone in Clueless. Sometimes, when my dopamine drops and nobody is looking, I even get lonely enough to fall back into the embrace of that unholy trio: Tinder, Bumble and Hinge. All the archetypes are there, too. Fred Wentworth, 31 Six foot with a six-pack on six figures, since apparently that matters. George Wickham, 26 Looking for my Tinderella. NO GOLDDIGGERS (I do not have any gold to dig). Eddie Ferrars, 24 Ethically non-monogamist entrepreneur. Me and my missus are looking for a third. Colonel Brandon is there too. In Sense and Sensibility, he's an older gentleman who falls in love with giddy, flighty Marianne, and waits patiently for her to see through Mr Willoughby's charade. These days, he's the leathery fifty-something who exclusively dates 20-year-olds because they're 'less complicated' and 'more sexually adventurous' than women his own age. Robert Ferrars, from the same novel, was always second best to his brother. Now, his profile pictures are exclusively group shots, leaving you to wonder – hope – if he's the good-looking one in the crowd. William Elliot, sexy layabout and heir to the Elliot estate in Persuasion, would have half a dozen catfish profiles on sugar baby websites, seeking a wealthy Mrs Robinson figure to fund his comfortable lifestyle. Women aren't immune to this, by the way. Every delusional, self-important woman – including me – believes herself to be a sensible and headstrong Lizzy Bennet but is actually a giddy Lydia, or a socially inept Miss Bates who mistakes herself for an it-girl like Emma Woodhouse. We all know a Charlotte Lucas or two or 10, who, despite deserving the world, wound up deep in the suburbs, cleaning up after Mr Collins. Like Anne Elliot before us, we've all wondered if our first love might show up on our wedding day to speak now or forever hold his peace. You either die an Emma or you live long enough to see yourself become a Mrs Bennet. I'm sure that if I'd ever made it through Mansfield Park or Northanger Abbey, I'd spot parallels between Fanny Price and Catherine Morland and all the women I know, too. Times may change, but people rarely do. Funny how the red-pilled hivemind fantasise about returning to traditional values. You can't get much more traditional than the 18th century, and all those women ever did was marry for money and status. If I match with Kevin, 33, do I get an estate in Toorak and 4000 a year, too? But no matter how many of these characters I meet in real life, no matter how many times I've found myself living out the plot of Austen's novels, it never ends the way I've been taught to expect it to. That's the thing about books and films: they make you forget that the story doesn't end after the acknowledgments. Surely Lizzy and Darcy would be at one another's throats within a week. Emma and Knightley's lust would fade and they would fall right back into their bickering sibling dynamic soon enough, depressing them and creeping everyone else out. Wentworth, red-pilled and resentful, would throw his hard-earned success and Anne's passive classism back in her face each time she asked him to unload the dishwasher. There are happy endings, and then there are happily ever afters. So why do I still believe? My relationships with all of Austen's archetypes may have eventually broken down, but not because those guys were awful (although most of them were), or because I was the whole problem (although often I was). It wasn't because they were frogs playing princes, or because I'm a sidekick convinced she's a protagonist. I'm not sensible, patient Anne Elliot. I'm not an effervescent Emma Woodhouse, or rational and cautious Elinor Dashwood. There's nothing I wouldn't give to be Cher Horowitz, but then, I'm not as endearingly messy as Bridget Jones, either – but someone is. My Wickham is someone else's Wentworth. For every Mr Elton seeking his Miss Hawkins, there's a serious and steady Knightley waiting to be scandalised and delighted by his Emma. Isn't it so nice to believe, however foolishly, that the great big romance of our lives is just a swipe and a few plot twists away? I saw a psychic last week and she confirmed that I still have a few big love stories ahead of me. She also told me that I'm about to come into great wealth and that my late dog is running around the afterlife in a bow tie, so I'm wont to trust every word out of her mouth. Argumentative and judgmental as I am – in an endearing way, I swear – I'd like to believe that the universe has laid a path for me that leads to Mr Darcy. I've been waiting 30 years. Someone tall and awkward, moody and quippy, difficult to impress but unendingly loyal, socially confused, terrible at parties – wait, am I describing my dream man, or myself? While I wait for him to show up, if he ever does, there are endless adaptations and modern retellings to occupy my Friday nights. A little delusion keeps hope alive. Here's the real silver lining. Although my life doesn't much resemble those of Austen's protagonists – no bonnets, no trips to Bath for the sea cure – I do have something better; something her heroines dreamed of. Despite disappointments and unsolicited dick pics, my story belongs to me. I have my own money, my own home, a full and wonderful life that doesn't hinge on marriage or inherited wealth. I'm not a piece of fruit left rotting in the sun just because I haven't made my way to Pemberley yet. Whether I meet 'the one' tomorrow or spend my whole life fostering dogs and watching period pieces, I'll be fine, and so will you. I can be – I have always been – my very own Mr Darcy.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
This modern homage to Jane Austen is genuinely charming, but it's no Clueless
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life ★★1/2 M, 98 minutes From a 21st-century vantage point, it's all too easy to pigeonhole the novels of Jane Austen as the ultimate in prim and proper Englishness – although their plots still hold up, as Clueless in the 1990s showed brilliantly. Imagine how the French must see her. Or rather, you don't have to imagine it, because you can get an idea from Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a first feature from the French writer-director Laura Piani. The bilingual Camille Rutherford stars as the heroine Agathe, a constant reader whose taste for Austen is portrayed as highly unusual by Parisian standards, even among admirers of the classics. Agathe is a misfit in other ways, the kind who laments she was born in the wrong century. Long-limbed and charmingly awkward, she works at the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company (as Piani did too), writes unpublished romances in her spare time, and derides dating apps as 'Uber sex'. If she's holding out for her own version of Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, she could be waiting a while, nor is there much sign of her literary career getting off the ground. So her friend and co worker Felix (Pablo Pauly) decides to give her a hand, signing her up for the Jane Austen Residency, a writer's retreat held at an English country house (the locations were all in France, not that it matters). Here she meets Oliver (Charlie Anson) a buttoned-up literature professor who also happens to be a distant connection of the Austen clan. While he's no great admirer of his ancestor's work, there's something oddly familiar about his standoffish manner, which puts him at odds with Agathe from the moment they meet. Could it be that she's met her match at last? Or has she been led astray by over-exposure to 19th century novels, with her real chance at happiness lying closer to home?
The Age
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Age
This modern homage to Jane Austen is genuinely charming, but it's no Clueless
Jane Austen Wrecked My Life ★★1/2 M, 98 minutes From a 21st-century vantage point, it's all too easy to pigeonhole the novels of Jane Austen as the ultimate in prim and proper Englishness – although their plots still hold up, as Clueless in the 1990s showed brilliantly. Imagine how the French must see her. Or rather, you don't have to imagine it, because you can get an idea from Jane Austen Wrecked My Life, a first feature from the French writer-director Laura Piani. The bilingual Camille Rutherford stars as the heroine Agathe, a constant reader whose taste for Austen is portrayed as highly unusual by Parisian standards, even among admirers of the classics. Agathe is a misfit in other ways, the kind who laments she was born in the wrong century. Long-limbed and charmingly awkward, she works at the famous English-language bookstore Shakespeare & Company (as Piani did too), writes unpublished romances in her spare time, and derides dating apps as 'Uber sex'. If she's holding out for her own version of Mr Darcy from Pride and Prejudice, she could be waiting a while, nor is there much sign of her literary career getting off the ground. So her friend and co worker Felix (Pablo Pauly) decides to give her a hand, signing her up for the Jane Austen Residency, a writer's retreat held at an English country house (the locations were all in France, not that it matters). Here she meets Oliver (Charlie Anson) a buttoned-up literature professor who also happens to be a distant connection of the Austen clan. While he's no great admirer of his ancestor's work, there's something oddly familiar about his standoffish manner, which puts him at odds with Agathe from the moment they meet. Could it be that she's met her match at last? Or has she been led astray by over-exposure to 19th century novels, with her real chance at happiness lying closer to home?
Yahoo
01-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
‘Jane Austen Wrecked My Life', ‘The Last Rodeo', ‘Friendship' Counterprogram ‘Lilo & Stitch' & ‘Mission: Impossible' Holiday Weekend
Sony Pictures Classics is out with Jane Austen Wrecked My Life in limited release, Angel Studios' The Last Rodeo opens wide and A24's Friendship added screens with few new indies braving the double whammy of live action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount's Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning. The former may have set a Disney record for Memorial Day weekend previews, Deadline reports, while Tom Cruise's high octane eighth outing as Ethan Hunt may have set a record preview night for a Mission: Impossible. More from Deadline 'Friendship' Rocks As Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Bromance Expands - Specialty Box Office 'Friendship' Moves To Top Ten Markets, Star Tim Robinson's Hometown Detroit; 'Sister Midnight', 'The Old Woman With The Knife' - Specialty Preview 'Friendship' Skyrockets To Top Limited Opening Of 2025 For Tim Robinson, Paul Rudd Comedy - Specialty Box Office Jane Austen in her own right 'has become a bit of a rock star in the marketplace,' SPC brass rightly noted when the distributor acquired the feature debut by Laura Piani ahead of its TIFF world premiere last year. It's opening on 61 screens in select markets including Lincoln Square and Angelika Film Center in New York and the AMC Grove and Laemmle Royal in LA. SPC is planning a nationwide bump next week to about 500 runs. Stars Camille Rutherford as Agathe, a hopelessly clumsy yet charming young woman who works in the legendary Shakespeare & Co. bookshop in Paris. She dreams of being a successful writer and of experiencing love akin to a Jane Austen novel but finds herself desperately single and plagued by writer's block. When Agathe's best friend (Pablo Pauly) gets her invited to the Jane Austen Writers' Residency in England, she finally has her Jane Austen moment. Certified Fresh at 85% with critics on Rotten Tomatoes. Angel Studios opens by Jon Avnet (Fried Green Tomatoes, Black Swan, Risky Business) on 2,205 screens. Stars Neal McDonough (who also co-wrote) as a retired rodeo legend who risks it all to save his grandson. Facing his own painful past and the fears of his family, he enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition as the oldest contestant ever. Along the way, he reconciles old wounds with his estranged daughter Sally (Sarah Jones) and proves that true courage is found in the fight for family. Produced in association with the Professional Bull Riders Association. Also stars Christopher McDonald and Ruve McDonough. Written by Avnet, Neal McDonough and Derek Presley. This is Angel's third partnership with faith-based McDonough Company after 2023 thriller The Shift and post-apocalyptic drama Homestead, slated for release December 20. A24s starring comedian Tim Robinson (I Think You Should Leave) and Paul Rudd has a big week 3 expansion to about 1,200 screens from 60. After a great limited opening at 6 theaters it rocked an expansion to 60 last week with $1.4 million and a no. 7 spot at the domestic box office. The R-rated directorial debut of Andrew DeYoung follows a bromance gone bad between two suburban dads. Comedy from Menemsha Films opens on four screens in NYC with Q&As at the Quad. Follows a $17k week and $110k run in Florida and a $225k cume from select showings. Expands to San Francisco May 30 and LA the following week. Directed by Daniel Robbins, it star Kyra Sedgwick, Cliff 'Method Man' Smith, David Paymer, Milana Vayntrub, Jon Bass, Meghan Leathers, Theo Taplitz, Catherine Curtin, John Bedford Lloyd and Ashley Zukerman. David and his fiancée Meg are about to have their parents meet for the first time over a Shabbat dinner on New York's Upper West Side when an accidental death (or murder?) gets in the way. With Meg's Catholic parents due any moment, this family dinner soon spirals into disaster. Winner of the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature at the 2024 Tribeca Festival. from Vertical, written and directed by Warwick Thornton, produced by and starring Cate Blanchett, is having a 7-day limited theatrical run before hitting VOD May 30. Set in 1940s Australia at a remote monastery with a mission for Aboriginal children run by a renegade nun, Sister Eileen (Blanchett). A new charge (Aswan Reid) is delivered in the dead of night, a boy who appears to have special powers. But the boy's Indigenous spiritual life does not mesh with the mission's Christianity and his mysterious power becomes a threat. Sister Eileen is faced with a choice between the traditions of her faith and the truth embodied in the boy. Premiered at Cannes in 2023, see Deadline review. Restoration: Akira Kurosawa's , the director's re-imagining of Shakespeare's King Lear transposed to medieval 16th century Japan, starts a run at New York's IFC Center and Laemmle Royal in LA to celebrate the epic's 40th anniversary. The 4K restoration is being re-released by New York-based Rialto Pictures. Resting after a wild boar hunt, warlord (Tatsuya Nakadai) decides to divide his domain among his three sons. A battle ensues between color-coded armies, a castle burns to the ground. Designed from the director's own watercolor storyboards, the film had four Oscar nominations including Best Director, Cinematography and Art Direction, with Emi Wada winning for costumes. Best of Deadline 'Poker Face' Season 2 Guest Stars: From Katie Holmes To Simon Hellberg Everything We Know About Amazon's 'Verity' Movie So Far Everything We Know About 'The Testaments,' Sequel Series To 'The Handmaid's Tale' So Far
