TIFF sets premieres from Steven Soderbergh and Nia DaCosta, and more of today's top stories
Gold Derby's for June 25, 2025.
The latest from Yorgos Lanthimos reteams the director with his Kinds of Kindness stars Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons for a satire with a (maybe) sci-fi twist. A remake of the 2003 Korean film Save the Green Planet!, Bugonia hits theaters this October.
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The Toronto International Film Festival has announced a handful of the films premiering at the annual event this September, including Steven Soderbergh's latest, The Christophers, and the new film from 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple's Nia DaCosta, Hedda.
The Sandman is hitting the road. Starting in September, Sandler will be heading out across the country on his You're My Best Friend tour. Tickets presales begin today at noon local time. The general on-sale starts Friday.
It's Emma Stone Trailer Day apparently, as the second (and final) theatrical trailer for Ari Aster's Western Eddington debuts online. That film is due in theaters on July 18.
The three-time Grammy winner has announced her first album in over a decade, Better Broken. And with the news, she dropped the video for the title track. The album is set for release on Sept. 19.
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Washington Post
2 hours ago
- Washington Post
Is it finally time to quit ‘The Bear'? Let's discuss.
TV's most serious comedy returned this week with 10 episodes depicting the dysfunctional lives of modern Chicagoans working in a professional kitchen. In its fourth season, 'The Bear' finds its characters working through many of the same problems that were introduced when the Emmy-winning series launched on FX a few years ago: money woes, mommy issues, communication breakdowns — and that's all before you get to the actual challenges of running a functional restaurant.
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3 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
‘Squid Game' finale lays bare a reality: The wealthy win and nice guys finish last
Rich people suck. The message was loud and clear when Netflix's Korean thriller 'Squid Game' arrived in 2021. Imagining wealth and class disparity at the heart of a high-stakes competition, it featured cash-strapped contestants playing a series of children's games to the death while uber-wealthy spectators bet on their odds of survival. The show's masked elites watched the carnage from a luxe, concealed spectator box, chomping on cigars and chortling as player after player met a gruesome death. The Korean-language show became the streamer's most watched series ever. Comeuppance for the hideously affluent seemed imminent and likely at the hands of protagonist Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae). The winner of Season 1's 'Squid Game' deserved vengeance after surviving a series of horrific scenarios — a hopscotch-type match played on a fragile glass bridge above a deadly chasm, a red light-green light contest where players who moved at the wrong time were 'eliminated' by machine gun fire. He watched as good people were killed by pink guards, other contestants and their own stupid actions. But no. The last six 'Squid Game' episodes, now streaming on Netflix, did something entirely unsatisfying. They veered from the prospect of timely, eat-the-rich vengeance porn to unflattering commentary about the rest of us, the other 99% who aren't Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos. What did we ever do to deserve a lethal game of double dutch with two giant mechanical children swinging a 10-ton metal rod in place of a jump rope? A lot, apparently. 'Squid Game' shows that under the right circumstances, regular folks are just as greedy and morally corrupt as the obscenely prosperous, no matter if their money problems stem from unforeseen medical bills, wanton gambling or generational poverty. Press the little guy or gal hard enough and they're just as ruthless as the mogul that's suppressing them. Season 3 picks up exactly where 2 left off. Gi-hun, who'd found his way back in the clandestine gaming complex (situated inside a mountain on a remote island), is Player 456 again among a new round of contestants. He'd planned to infiltrate the operation from inside, staging a coup against the VIPs and Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) who run the games. But now it's clear he's failed. He's cornered by guards, the players who fought alongside him are dead, and he's thrown back in with the remaining players, many of whom survived because they're the most craven of the group. Free and fair elections are at the heart of every democracy, or so 'Squid Game' reminds us each time the bedraggled players are asked for their vote regarding the next round: Continue to compete and thin the herd for a larger reward or stop and split their winnings with their fellow contestants? Majority rules, and each time the group opt to sacrifice their lives — and everyone else's — in pursuit of money. Series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk has spoken about his dwindling faith in humanity as it relates to his concerns about South Korea's democracy, and you'll hear him loud and clear in Season 3: Voting is power, but look what happens when the population increasingly puts its own self-interest above that of the greater good. It's a scenario that should be recognizable to Americans by now. 'Squid Game' Season 3 takes that idea to the extreme, and quite fearlessly, Hwang puts the series to bed without punishing the rich. Instead he dares to lay bare a truth that's become all too apparent of late: Wealth wins over morality and money trumps accountability. Nice guys not only finish last, they wind up pulverized like everyone else below a certain tax bracket, no matter their dedication toward humanity. The Korean show's run has ended, but not before a finale that alludes to a Hollywood sequel. The episode, set in Los Angeles, shows a familiar scene. A down-and-out man is approached by a mysterious, well-dressed figure who uses a simple kid's game to test his want of money against his tolerance for pain and humiliation. Those who've watched 'Squid Game' will recognize it as the beginning of Gi-hun's journey, which ended with a sliver of redemption in an abyss of darkness. The mysterious figure appears to be a recruiter for a new, English-language 'Squid Game.' She's played by an A-list celebrity — Cate Blanchett — operating in a city renowned for its self-involvement and privilege. 'Squid Game' has a whole new playing field.
Yahoo
12 hours ago
- Yahoo
‘Squid Game' Season 3: Reviews warn of a divisive WTF sprint to the finish line
Let the games... end! Four years after it took the world by storm, Squid Game is throwing in the towel. The South Korean sensation just dropped its third and final season on Netflix, bringing the story of debtor-turned-liberator Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) to a conclusion. "It's a mixture of everything you can imagine. It's more brutal, more violent. It'sdarker, and even funnier," show creator told Gold Derby last month. "If I have to pick one season out of all three [as] my favorite, the best season is going to be Season 3." More from Gold Derby 'F1: The Movie' - Instant Oscar predictions The Emmys have one last chance to make things right with 'The Comeback' But do critics agree with Hwang? Opinions on the final six episodes — particularly the big denouement — are all over the map. Take Rebecca Nicholson writing in The Guardian that the series ends on a "moment so WTF and genuinely surprising that I bet my editor a serious amount of money she wouldn't be able to guess what happens." "Such reckless gambling is the sort of behaviour that would land me in Squid Game in the first place, so it just shows that nobody here has learned any lessons from it whatsoever," she continues. "The final two episodes have a nicely grand and operatic feel to them, and ultimately, Squid Game does its job. But it leaves the impression, too, that it has become a more traditional action-thriller than it once was." But Indiewire's Ben Travers is more on board with where the series goes in its grand finale. "While the general vibes are dour (there's very little room left for humor), Squid Game delivers enough closure to satiate anyone still perched on the edge of their seat, and its brief, fleeting bursts of light frame the darkness with the starkest truths." Time's Judy Berman is similarly ready to award a medal to the show's final sprint, singling out the second episode, "The Starry Night," for particular praise. "This is the kind of episode that will surely thrill fans and inspire recappers to dissect the ethical and emotional dimensions of each unthinkable choice," she teases. "Welcome to the exhilaratingly brutal last chapter of Squid Game, which ensnares viewers with characters and storylines we can't help but care about, then implicates us for treating a sadistic spectacle as entertainment."Over in The Hollywood Reporter, though, Angie Han knocks the series for an "unsatisfying" finish. "It brings me no pleasure to report that the third and thankfully last of Squid Game seasons only confirms that we, like Gi-hun should've left that cursed island behind for good after his first victory," she writes, later adding: "By the time Squid Game finally crawls over the finish line, there's no sense of the triumph you might get from completing a really good story — only of relief that this entire grueling experience is finally over." Look no further than Rotten Tomatoes to get a sense of the polarizing nature of Season 3: The aggregated critical reviews have resulted in a strong score of 88 percent but, the users "Popcornmeter" clocks in with a woeful 39 percent, indicating fans have not responded well. As Vulture's Roxana Hadadi puts it, Squid Game probably should have remained a "one-season wonder," instead of coming back for more. "There's an increasing repetition to how Squid Game plays out, a rehashing of the original idea instead of a deepening of it," she notes. "The payoff is in the metatext, in how Squid Game aimed its contempt outward through the existential dilemma of its own popularity." Best of Gold Derby Cristin Milioti, Amanda Seyfried, Michelle Williams, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actress interviews Paul Giamatti, Stephen Graham, Cooper Koch, and the best of our Emmy Limited Series/Movie Actor interviews Lee Jung-jae, Adam Scott, Noah Wyle, and the best of our Emmy Drama Actor interviews Click here to read the full article.
