“Fans of The Room are not like the fans of any other cult film,” says author/actor Greg Sestero, speaking on the phone from Paris, France. Earlier that evening, Sestero had attended a sold-out screening of The Disaster Artist, the Oscar-nominated film based on his book of the same name. The bestselling memoir describes the making…

To Margot Robbie, Tonya Harding was a pit bull. That’s not just a metaphor. It’s how the fast-rising Australian actor (Suicide Squad, Goodbye, Christopher Robin) elected to play the real-life figure skater in the just-released movie I, Tonya. The film, which is already appearing on many end-of-year top 10 lists, screened on December 2 at…

“The film has a very poetic heartbeat, perhaps because it’s based on a book written by a poet,” observes Prartho Sereno, sipping a cup of coffee this rainy Saturday, while discussing The Zookeeper’s Wife, a new film based on the bestselling book of the same name. “It’s funny, I know, but different poems kept coming to…

As the Sunday afternoon sun reaches into the lobby of the movie theater, a stray shaft of light briefly illuminates a massive cardboard display propped up against the wall. It vividly depicts actress Emma Watson—who briefly glows in the sunlight—posed alongside an array of gesticulating clocks, candelabras, teapots and feather dusters, plus an enormous, forlornly…

  “Slavery is a horror story,” says San Francisco playwright Star Finch. “Slavery is something that, when you are African-American, and also a parent, you have to tell your children about at some point. And that’s horrifying. That’s a very painful thing. It’s painful in general, telling your children about the horrors of the world.…

Last October, on opening night of the Mill Valley Film Festival (MVFF)—and months before La La Land was officially released in theaters—its writer-director, Damien Chazelle, was in Marin with his leading lady Emma Stone, and composer Justin Hurwitz. During a pre-screening press conference, Chazelle was asked about the Oscar potential for the film, a musical about artists…

“Having so much archival material to draw on, that was such a blessing,” says Ruth Negga (Preacher, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.), who plays Mildred Loving in Jeff Nichols’ beautifully crafted drama Loving, the story of Mildred and Richard Loving. It was their marriage, declared illegal in the state of Virginia in 1958, that led to the U.S. Supreme…

“How about the Mayflower?” suggests musician Danny Sorentino. We’re standing in front of the Christopher B. Smith Rafael Film Center. “We just saw a movie about the Beatles, right? We’d be wrong not to go have a beer at a British pub now, you know?” Well argued. We turn and head up the street toward the Mayflower…

“I think it was one of the best roles Hugh Grant has ever had,” declares Richard Connema, praising Grant’s recent work in the new film Florence Foster Jenkins—directed by Stephen Frears (Dangerous Liaisons, High Fidelity, The Queen)—in which Meryl Streep also stars. “I think Grant deserves an Oscar for it. And that kid, the piano player, the actor…