Category: Entertainment

Netflix is offering global cinephiles a deeper dive into the work of Korean master Lee Chang-dong as it ramps up the awards-season rollout of his acclaimed new drama Possible Love.

Fresh off Possible Love’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize win at the Venice Film Festival over the weekend, the streamer said Monday that it is expanding the availability of all six of Lee’s previous features across various international markets. The rollout includes Green Fish (1997), Peppermint Candy (1999), Oasis (2002), Secret Sunshine (2007), Poetry (2010) and Burning (2018), although availability and timing vary by country.

Green Fish and Secret Sunshine began streaming in late August in Italy, the U.K., France, Australia and New Zealand, while Peppermint Candy and Oasis launched on Netflix in Italy and Spain on Sept. 4. Poetry and Burning are slated to become available on the service in markets including the U.S., Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Netflix says the films will be offered with subtitles in as many as six languages, depending on the territory.

Taken together, the films represent one of Korean cinema’s most beloved bodies of work. Lee made his feature debut with Green Fish in 1997, followed by Peppermint Candy, which screened in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes in 2000. Oasis earned Lee the Silver Lion for best director at Venice in 2002, with star Moon So-ri receiving the festival’s Marcello Mastroianni Award. Jeon Do-yeon later won best actress at Cannes for Lee’s Secret Sunshine in 2007, and Poetry took Cannes’ best screenplay prize in 2010. And Lee’s most recent feature, Burning, competed for the Palme d’Or in 2018 and landed on many critics’ best-of lists that year.

Possible Love premiered to widespread acclaim in Venice before taking the festival’s Silver Lion Grand Jury Prize Saturday. The win marked the first time a South Korean film has received the honor and the first prize for a Korean film at Venice since Kim Ki-duk’s Pieta won the Golden Lion in 2012.

The searing drama reunites Lee with two of his most celebrated early collaborators: Jeon, the Cannes best actress winner from Secret Sunshine, and Sul Kyung-gu, who starred in Peppermint Candy and Oasis. They are joined by rising leading man Zo In-sung and Parasite co-star Cho Yeo-jeong.

Possible Love follows two married couples from opposite ends of Korea’s class divide whose lives become unexpectedly intertwined. Blue-collar Ho-seok (Sul), a man traumatized by losing his factory job after a workers’ strike, lives a quiet life with his determinedly optimistic wife, Mi-ok (Jeon). A chance encounter brings them into contact with Ye-ji (Cho), a documentary filmmaker working on a project about displaced laborers, and her affluent husband, Sang-woo (Zo). The two wives soon strike up a tentative friendship as Ye-ji expresses interest in telling Ho-seok’s story — but the group dynamic grows increasingly complicated by their extreme class differences and subtly conflicting desires.

South Korea selected Possible Love as its submission for the best international feature Oscar, and Netflix is positioning the film as one of its major awards contenders of the season.

The film opens theatrically in South Korea on Sept. 23, followed by Australia and New Zealand on Oct. 22 and the U.K., Japan, U.S. and Canada on Oct. 23. It will launch globally on Netflix on Nov. 6.

Reba McEntire has been tapped to perform a special tribute to the late Dolly Parton during the 2026 Emmy Awards on Monday night, The Hollywood Reporter has learned.

The Grammy winner is expected to sing a song by the Queen of Country Music, who died last month at age 80 after a brief battle with cancer. In addition to McEntire’s performance, New York Knicks point guard Jalen Brunson is also expected to make a guest appearance during a pre-taped segment at the beginning of the telecast.

It’s no secret that host Mariska Hargitay is a longtime Knicks fan, regularly spotted sitting courtside at games at Madison Square Garden. However, when THR caught up with Hargitay ahead of the ceremony, she wouldn’t confirm whether Brunson would make a special appearance.

“Not sure, but maybe OG will come flying in with 1.2 seconds left,” Hargitay said at the time.

It was previously announced that the awards ceremony will also feature a performance by Noah Kahan for the In Memoriam segment, as well as celebrations for the 30th anniversary of Buffy the Vampire Slayer with David Boreanaz and Sarah Michelle Gellar and the 50th anniversary of Charlie’s Angels with Kate Jackson, Cheryl Ladd and Jaclyn Smith.

Heading into the ceremony, HBO Max‘s The Pitt leads the Emmy nominees with 25 nominations, followed by HBO Max’s Hacks (with 24 nominations), Apple TV+’s Widow’s Bay (19), Apple TV+‘s Pluribus (18 nominations), Netflix’s Beef (16), HBO Max’s DTF St. Louis (13) and NBC’s Saturday Night Live and Amazon Prime Video’s Spider-Noir with 11 nominations each.

The 78th Emmy Awards, hosted by Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star, will air live from the Peacock Theater on Monday, Sept. 14, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT on NBC and Peacock.

Chris Rock revealed on Sunday that filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson provided feedback on his latest directorial project, Misty Green.

The comedian mentioned during the film’s premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday that Anderson watched the movie, which Rock wrote and directed, before telling The Hollywood Reporter that he watched Misty Green as a friend and critic.

“Both,” Rock said when asked if Anderson watched as “a bud” or to give notes. “But it’s always for notes. It’s like, what do I have you — what’s the use of having a friend like you who can’t help me?” 

Rock would say not what Anderson changed or where in the film audiences may see his changes but did share that the Oscar-winning director provided “a tweak here or there.” 

Distributed by A24, Misty Green follows an award-winning actress (Rosalind Eleazar) whose career has faded. Determined to make peace with her past, Misty attempts a career comeback after reconnecting with her former talent agent (Topher Grace). In addition to Eleazar and Grace, the comedy-drama also stars Adam Driver, Daniel Kaluuya, Anna Kendrick and Rock in a small role.

Rock told THR he was inspired to write the film after watching a former A-list actress perform in a “loop group,” an ensemble of voice actors who provide sound effects or background conversations for film and TV. 

“ I was editing a movie, or something, and I was doing a loop group,” Rock explained at The Hollywood Reporter’s Studio at 1 Hotel during TIFF, presented by sponsor Canada Goose. “ You’re almost done with the movie, right? And you need extra sound effects, [so] you ask for a loop group. In the loop group was a formerly famous actress. I was like, ‘Wow, what is she doing here?’ Because you don’t really get paid for loop group.” 

Rock said that he’s “never” going to share who the actress was, but “something about watching her sparked the initial [idea].” 

“Like, ‘oh, this is a whole movie here,’” Rock added. “What happened in her life that she’s here at the loop?”  

Misty Green is scheduled to be released in theaters on Oct. 9. 

Prima Facie carries a bracing, important, timely lesson about getting justice for victims of rape. Cynthia Erivo plays Tessa Ensler, a rising star among British barristers, who often deals with assault cases, and whose world crumbles along with her belief in the legal system when she herself is assaulted by a colleague she was dating. Suzie Miller wrote the screenplay, expanding on her one-woman stage version, which won the 2023 Olivier for Best New Play, along with the Best Actress Olivier and a Tony for Jodie Comer, and its easy to see how well it might have worked in the theater with a galvanizing performance. But there is no use sugar-coating the huge disappointment the film turns out to be.

As a message, Prima Facie is still a howl of rage and a plea for change. But as a film it is a near-total muddle, from the clunky recurring voiceover to the cringey, obvious visuals and a preachy ending, with only some stunning supporting performances and a brief, powerful middle section to redeem it.

Directed by Susanna White, whose smart works include the series Generation Kill and the thriller Our Kind of Traitor, the film opens with some of its heaviest-handed imagery. As Tessa bounces up the steps of the Old Bailey courthouse, already wearing her robe and white courtroom wig, the camera focuses on her out-of-place black-sequined sneakers. She steps into a room full of sleek, posh-looking women lawyers and in the first of her voiceovers, many taken directly from the play, says, “Thoroughbreds, that’s how I see them.” The film then cuts to images of — really, it’s this literal — horses.

She goes on to say, “But I’m here too.” Although she’s a working-class girl who got through Cambridge on a scholarship, she fits in well with her colleagues. As they walk out for drinks together, she explains to a young coworker — in clumsy exposition and foreshadowing that is really for us — that legally it doesn’t matter if an assault victim didn’t consent, as long as the accused believed there was consent.

Before long she has sex in the office with another rising-star lawyer, the privileged Julian. “I want this,” her unnecessary voiceover says. Julian is played with winning charm by Daniel Ings in a role that stretches him from his usual parts, like the buffoonish screw-up brother in the series The Gentlemen. Casting is not one of this film’s problems.

A shrewd element of Miller’s story is that she sets up the rape to be as legally thorny as possible. After a terrific date and sex with Julian, Tessa feels ill from too much wine and food, and refuses when Julian wants sex again. There is no doubt that what happens next is a violation. It is also another example of how little White trusts the audience to grasp anything. The focus blurs, Julian’s expression becomes furious and we see images of shattered glass. In a director’s statement, White says she wanted the images and sound throughout to express Tessa’s inner thoughts, which seems like a fine idea on paper but lands on screen with as much of a thud as the thumping sound effects that hammer home the point during the attack. And the surreal touches, appearing sporadically, are an odd fit with the pedestrian voiceover.

After the rape, the film temporarily gains the impact it should have. Erivo walks stiffly through the first section, but here eloquently displays the pain and self-doubt Tessa is feeling when she goes to a police station to report the assault. The camera stays close on her face as she answers the officers’ questions, and for once the voiceover works effectively to tell us what she doesn’t say out loud: that she knows she was foolish to have taken a shower and washed away the evidence, that she should not have deleted a text from Julian, that she had been drinking. She has been on the other side of this kind of case, and knows she is not in a strong position to prove what happened.

But the film quickly moves on to become a courtroom drama with blurrier focus, with Tessa on the stand giving the kind of speech that is a cliché of the genre. Erivo delivers a monologue, as Tessa makes the point that expecting logic and consistency from rape victims runs counter to their experience. They know what happened, but the details can be foggy due to the trauma, she says, and the legal system ought to account for that. Despite her visceral anger, what should have been a stirring dramatic moment seems stage bound.

In opening up the film, Miller deftly brings to life characters only mentioned in the play. Noma Dumezwemi, so strong in so many supporting roles, notably in The Undoing, is moving as Tessa’s mother, a cleaning woman who has little grasp of her daughter’s world but who stands solidly by her side, even as she worries that reporting the rape will ruin her brilliant future. Toheeb Jimoh (Sam on Ted Lasso) adds to the effective picture of class difference as Tessa’s brother, whose response to learning about the rape is to try to beat up Julian. Like everyone else involved in this well-meaning dud, they deserved so much better.