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In the surreal and Kafka-esque drama, “The Actor,” starring André Holland (“Moonlight”)and Gemma Chan (“Crazy Rich Asians”), New York-based theater actor Paul Cole (Holland) is wrapping up an out-of-town engagement when a casual adultery has a disastrous consequence. Helmed by filmmaker Duke Johnson, known for co-directing “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind”), in the film, Cole can’t remember who he was, where he lives, or even, for a time, what he does.

Continue reading ‘The Actor’: André Holland & Gemma Chan Talk The Joys Of Working On Duke Johnson’s Surreal Identity Drama at The Playlist.

Anna Wintour announced today that the fourth annual Vogue World will take place in Hollywood on October 26 at the Paramount Pictures Studio Lot. Celebrating the “conversation between film and fashion,” 100% of the ticket proceeds will go to the Entertainment Community fund, with a focus on supporting costuming professionals impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires.

“Vogue World: Hollywood will be a one-night-only show with a huge cast of models and actors, dancers, musicians and surprises, and it will set great film costumes next to brilliant fashion collections,” said Wintour. “By mixing fashion with the arts and culture in the center of a city, and by raising funds for a cause, Vogue World has become a runway show-as-rallying cry, a way to fix the attention of a huge global audience, to bring awareness, and sound an unmistakable note of positivity, creativity, and hope.”

This year’s event will feature contributions from costume...

The 2025 Sffilm Festival lineup is finally here!

The Sffilm Festival will take place April 17 to 27 in theaters across San Franciscoʼs Marina and Presidio neighborhoods, the Mission, and in Berkeley. The festival lineup includes over 150 films from more than 50 countries including 11 World Premieres, 10 International Premieres, 10 North American Premieres, and six US Premieres. All feature films in competition, special events, and Marquee sections are California premieres. There are also 11 Sffilm Supported titles which are projects that received support from the organizationʼs youth education and artist development programs as grants, residencies, or funding, reflecting the year round mission of Sffilm. This is the largest-ever showcase of Sffilm Supported projects ever in the festival.

“I am over the moon that we are back with 11 days of screenings, special Tributes, Awards, free talks, our annual Industry Days Conference, parties, city tours, and much more. It has been a delight to curate over 150 films for this...

When Duke Johnson was making the Oscar-nominated animated feature “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman, Kaufman suggested Johnson read “Memory,” a lost Donald Westlake novel that had recently been published. (Kaufman had heard about its resurrection on NPR.) The novel, about a man named Paul Cole, who finds himself stranded in a small town with a head injury after being attacked by the jealous husband of Paul’s lover, had been completed in 1963 and shopped around by Westlake, with no takers. An attempt was made in the 1970s to shop it around again but Westlake, one of the great American crime fiction writers, declined. After his death in 2008, it was finally published by Hard Case Crime two years later.

“[Kaufman] was telling me that he really liked it, because what was interesting about it is that it’s by this famous crime novelist and that it was in the guise of a noir thriller,...

Each week we highlight the noteworthy titles that have recently hit streaming platforms in the United States. Check out this week’s selections below and past round-ups here.

Anora (Sean Baker)

Sean Baker’s Anora expands his filmmaking vision, pushing the writer-director-editor’s fifth consecutive story on sex workers into a higher plane of awards and commercial success. It’s a romantic comedy, a madcap dash around New York City, a movie ruminating on loss, love, and class disparity. Baker aims to put audiences through a ringer of emotional swings, ending with a desolation that’s been building in the background, easier to spot once the tinsel’s shimmer fades. With a true star-making performance from Mikey Madison and a deep bench of supporting actors, Anora whirls until suddenly it doesn’t, and all that’s left is earned, resonant silence from both its characters and audience. – Michael F.

Where...

Director Duke Johnson‘s new film “The Actor” creates a unique bond between its lead character and the audience, using a variety of subjective techniques to convey the title character’s perspective to the viewer. From repurposing sets and actors playing multiple roles to various aural and visual motifs that all contribute to a sense of disorientation and déjà vu, the movie is filled with moments that allow the audience to intimately share the protagonist’s experience.

As an actor struggling to figure out who he is and where he belongs after an accident leaves him with amnesia, André Holland is so perfect for the part that it’s difficult to imagine the movie without him. But Johnson initially spent a lot of time working with another actor — one whose discussions with the director ended up dramatically influencing the shape of the script.

“The original script found its way to Ryan Gosling,...

The Dutchman Photo: South by Southwest

In his narrative feature directorial début, Andre Gaines adapts playwright Amiri Baraka's 1964 one-act play, The Dutchman. Set on the New York City subway, the psychological thriller revolves around Clay (André Holland), a troubled Black businessman who has a chance encounter with the mysterious white stranger Lula (Kate Mara). Meanwhile, Clay and his wife, Kaya's (Zazie Beatz) therapist, Dr Amiri (Stephen Mckinley Henderson), inexplicably appears to him outside of their counselling sessions.

Clay's chance encounter with Lula appears to be a dangerous omen that threatens to unravel his life completely. To escape this encounter, he must answer deeper questions that have led him to this moment.

Gaines' previous credits include his 2021 feature documentary début, The One And Only Dick Gregory, and 2022's, After Jackie. From looking back to the famous American comedian, Gaines's focus shifted to the struggle for racial equality in Major League Baseball,...

For cinematographer Joe Passarelli, it was a smooth transition going from the stop-motion “Anomalisa” (2015) to the live-action “The Actor” with director Duke Johnson. That’s because both films are formally bold, mind-bending tales about the search for identity.

“Anomalisa” explores Fregoli syndrome, where people appear as the same person in disguise, by marrying distinctive stop-motion designs with stylized action; “The Actor,” by contrast, tackles a variation of amnesia, where people appear as a troupe of actors playing multiple roles, with more dream-like theatricality.

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s surreal novel, “Memory,” Johnson’s newest film focuses on André Holland as a man who suffers from both long-term and short-term memory loss; he’s trying to get back to New York from a ’50s Midwestern town, but his only anchor in a shifting reality is the woman he befriends played by Gemma Chan. Holland’s continually refreshing blank slate is...

When director Duke Johnson sat down and watched Federico Fellini’s 1954 classic “La Strada,” he was immediately drawn to the iconic clown costume worn by Giulietta Masina. Now in his newest film, “The Actor,” a similar outfit is adorned by Edna (Gemma Chan) while out on an intimate date with Paul (André Holland).

“It’s these two people that feel like maybe they don’t fit into the world,” Johnson tells Variety. “With these two oddballs finding each other, the possibility of connection was the driving force. They’ve really hit it off.”

The moment takes place on Halloween night when Paul, still trying to piece together who he is after waking up with amnesia, goes out with Edna after the two meet at the cinema. Despite it being Halloween, you’d hardly be able to tell by looking at the men’s synonymous coats, making Edna’s hand-stitched blue clown costume immediately stand out.

André Holland is a busy man. His recent TV series The Big Cigar and Terminator Zero were great, and his new film The Actor is a personal favorite, a film noir masterpiece. He is also starring in this year's The Dutchman, Once Again... (Statues Never Die), and Love, Brooklyn, along with the film The Revisionist, which stars Holland alongside Dustin Hoffman, Alison Brie, and Tom Sturridge. Like The Actor, The Revisionist deals with the blurring of lines between art and life, truth and fiction, identity and performance; Holland plays the titular actor in The Actor and a writer in The Revisionist. Though, as Holland told MovieWeb in a recent interview, the two films are different in many ways.

"It's completely different, and it's still very much [happening]," said Holland (who is also currently attending Harvard Divinity School). "We just finished maybe six weeks ago, something like that, or maybe two months.

Gemma Chan and Channing Tatum are starring in a new movie called Josephine, and it seems like a doozy. Chan, who recently spoke with MovieWeb about her hypnotic noir mystery The Actor, opened up about the filmmaking experience behind Josephine. "I'm not actually sure what I'm allowed to say about it. We have finished filming it. We filmed it in San Francisco. It was such an incredible experience," said Chan, who added:

"Beth de Araújo, the director, this is loosely based off something that happened in her childhood, so we were all aware of our responsibility to doing justice to something that was a story that's very personal to her and her family. Channing was incredible. We had an amazing young girl called Mason who plays Josephine. I'm really excited. I haven't seen the film yet, I think they're still just finishing up the edit. So I'm excited to hopefully get to see it soon,...

The 2025 SXSW Film & TV Festival kicked off Friday, March 7 in Austin with world and North American premieres of movies in 11 sections, TV shows in three sections and several short film and virtual reality programs.

This year’s festival launched with opening-night film Another Simple Favor reteaming Paul Feig, Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, with other notable world premiere titles including Chad Hartigan’s The Threesome, Kate Mara‘s two entries The Astronaut and The Dutchman (the latter also starring André Holland), the Ben Affleck-Jon Bernthal sequel The Accountant 2, the Nicole Kidman-starring Holland and Death of a Unicorn starring Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega.

Check out Deadline’s reviews recaps below as films premiere at the fest, which runs through March 15, and click on the titles for the full reviews.

The Accountant 2 ‘The Accountant 2’

Section: Headliner

Director: Gavin O’Connor

Cast: Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Daniella Pineda,...

André Holland continues his streak as one of the sharpest dramatic actors working today — and I’m not just talking about “Moonlight,” have you seen TV’s “The Knick”? — as a New York businessman in marital freefall in Andre Gaines’ “The Dutchman.” Gaines and co-writer Qasim Basir lift Amiri Baraka’s classic 1964 play out of its midcentury Civil Rights Movement context and transplant the text to present-day Manhattan, where Clay (Holland) is going mad over his wife Kaya’s (Zazie Beetz) recent admission of an infidelity.

So launches a dark night of the soul through the city that echoes “Eyes Wide Shut” — in which mysterious women also tempt a spiraling Tom Cruise over an evening after Nicole Kidman confesses to extramarital thoughts — and even “After Hours” with its magical realism and deus-ex-machina moments of utter (and intentional) absurdity. But Clay’s psychosexual and personal freefall does not land him at...

André Holland is on a roll with three new films, ‘The Last Supper’ tests the faith-based market, hot Vietnamese director Tran Thanh is back, and documentary October 8 examines the explosion of antisemitism after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.

A handful of big indies are out with wide releases from Focus Features (Black Bag) to A24 (Opus) to Falling Forward Films and Ketchup Entertainment (Looney Tunes: The Day The Earth Blew Up).

Neon, the indie distributor of the moment, is out with mystery-thriller The Actor, André Holland’s third leading role this year after Sundance-premiering Love, Brooklyn by Rachael Abigail Holder, which Holland also produced, and The Dutchman, by Andre Gaines, which just debuted at SXSW. The Actor opens in NYC at the Angelika, Holland doing Q&As, at The Grove in LA and top 10 markets – 20+ screens in all.

Based on the novel Memory by Donald E. Westlake, the film,...

The Actor is a true film experience — artistically and intellectually gripping, or confusing and boring, depending on the audience. Its superb lead performance, production design, and poetically philosophical approach will be eagerly imbibed by some viewers who will be quick to call The Actor a masterpiece, while most mainstream audiences will be left restless by its odd pacing and lack of romantic chemistry. Your reaction to the film utterly depends upon your cinematic proclivities. The arthouse crowd will surely gush while the Average Joe may want to steer clear. If you're somewhere in between the two, summon an adventurous spirit and rush to see the film before it disappears from theaters all-too-soon.

Initially set in 1950s Ohio, an actor (André Holland) wakes up in a small town's hospital after being attacked for a dalliance with a married woman. He has no memory of the violent incident or his life before.

After co-directing 2015’s Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman, Duke Johnson’s solo follow-up is an adaptation of the Donald E. Westlake’s novel Memory. Paul Cole (André Holland) is the eponymous actor––or so people tell him is his occupation after he wakes up in small-town Ohio with a mysterious head injury and zero memories. There’s a beautiful woman, Edna (Gemma Chan), and a small cast of characters who may or may not have Paul’s best interests at heart. It’s a classic noir setup, but Johnson is less interested in doling out narrative breadcrumbs that build into a perfectly interlocking narrative so that audiences can solve a central mystery––instead he centers us firmly within the headspace of Paul, prioritizing larger philosophical questions about identity along with a budding romance between Paul and Edna. Johnson was transfixed watching Chan deliver a monologue about lost love in Steven Soderbergh...

Duke Johnson ('Anomalisa') discusses his mysterious, moody masterpiece with André Holland and Gemma Chan, the book it's based on, and how Ryan Gosling is involved. 'The Actor' is in theaters March 14 from Neon.

When New York actor Paul Cole is beaten and left for dead in 1950s Ohio, he loses his memory and finds himself stranded in a mysterious small town where he struggles to get back home and reclaim what he's lost.

André Holland & Gemma Chan discuss their remarkably unique new film 'The Actor,' written and directed by Duke Johnson ('Anomalisa'). The pair discuss the liberation and challenge of filming in such a surreal, allegorical world, discuss their theories of the mysterious film, and touch on future projects such as 'Josephine' with Channing Tatum and 'The Revisionist' with Dustin Hoffman. See 'The Actor' in theaters starting March 14, 2025, from Neon.

Based on the novel 'Memory' by Donald E. Westlake, 'The Actor' finds Paul Cole (André Holland) stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer Edna (Chan). As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery,...

One of the great pleasures of director Duke Johnson‘s haunting and beautiful new film “The Actor” is, appropriately enough given the film’s title, the abundance of terrific performances. André Holland anchors the movie as the title character, an actor struggling to figure out who he is and where he belongs after an accident leaves him with amnesia. He’s surrounded by a gallery of equally fascinating supporting players — most of whom play multiple characters, with the actors often unrecognizable under layers of elaborate hair and makeup.

For Johnson, the decision to create a troupe of actors who would play different characters throughout was both practical and philosophical. “There are the limitations of shooting in Europe and getting your actors,” Johnson told IndieWire on an upcoming episode of the Filmmaker Toolkit podcast, noting that getting a huge cast to Budapest for production would have been prohibitively expensive — once he...

For as much light as The Actor is bathed in, it’s equally shrouded in darkness. Duke Johnson’s solo directorial debut is a film of bleary sun and swallowing night and almost nothing in-between. It wouldn’t make sense to depict the in-between. That would be realistic, and The Actor is anything but real.

Jubilant strings swell over vintage opening credits as we peer at the peaks of skyscrapers in a still, top-of-the-cityscape shot not too dissimilar from the angle we get on Saffron City in the original Super Smash Bros. The twinkling black-and-white image has a glowy 1950s TV-hour charm, the text surrounded by mid-century atomic sparkle logos (see: poster). It transitions neatly into the doomy film noir scene we open on––the inciting incident.

In a motel room, mid-womanizing, our pitiable protagonist (a terrific André Holland) gets his comeuppance: a chair to the face. As it so happens,...

Based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake, “The Actor,” a Kafka-esque crime-noir fantasy about identity and memory, is the latest directorial effort by filmmaker Duke Johnson, known for his work in animation and co-directing “Anomalisa” with screenwriter/director Charlie Kaufman (“Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind”).

But as Johnson reminds you, you’re more than just your IMDb page, and while “The Actor” is his feature-length live-action directorial debut, the filmmaker went to film school, directed his fair share of shorts, and learned his live-action chops in college.

Continue reading Director Duke Johnson Talks ‘The Actor,’ Learning From Charlie Kaufman & André Holland As Collaborator For Life [Exclusive] at The Playlist.

Of all the things we forget in life, dreams may be the most frequent. No matter how much you journal or try to find ways to cling to these subconscious fragments, they always seem to slip away as we re-enter the waking world. It’s then interesting that, for all the ways it populates the films we conjure up, only rarely does cinema truly capture a sense of this half-remembered dreaming. Too often, it’s made overly literal and less hazy even as this is what defines so much of our lives. However, this makes the works that successfully tap into this all the more special to dream with.

“The Actor” is one such film. A captivating portrait of a man who can’t seem to remember who he is and may not ever be able to, Duke Johnson’s live-action feature debut is an enrapturing film that speaks in...

There’s something initially alluring about the way Duke Johnson uses surrealism in his solo directorial feature The Actor. The film stars the gifted André Holland as a theater performer who becomes an amnesiac after suffering a violent blow to the head. His attacker is the angry husband of the woman with whom he’s having a torrid affair. We don’t see much of the instigating incident, but Johnson offers enough glimpses at the start of the film to help us figure out what happened.

The Anomalisa co-director adapted this screenplay, which he wrote with Stephen Cooney, from Donald E. Westlake’s thriller Memory. The novel is propulsive; its drama immediate and matter-of-fact. Johnson slows it down for us in The Actor, choosing a gauzy style and languid pace to shape his film like a dream you might appreciate but ultimately struggle to remember.

When we meet Paul Cole...

It can be difficult to step out of the shadow of a creative collaborator, which Duke Johnson does fitfully with “The Actor,” his first live-action theatrical feature. Though Johnson has had a steady career for close to two decades, principally in stop-motion animation for television, he is perhaps best known for co-directing “Anomalisa” with Charlie Kaufman. A full decade later, Kaufman (who serves as an executive producer on “The Actor”) still has a marked influence on Johnson’s solo directorial debut, though it is awkwardly grafted onto a noir-inflected tale — based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake — of a man recovering from amnesia and attempting to rediscover who he is.

That man is Paul Cole (André Holland), a member of a New York City theater troupe on the last leg of a Midwest tour. As the film begins, he is preparing to bed a married woman before her...

Co-directed by Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson, 2015’s “Anomalisa” told a walking nightmare of a story about a motivational speaker who perceives (almost) everyone he meets to be the same identical stranger. They all share the same face, they all speak with the same voice, and they all reflect the inescapable self-absorption of the main character, whose hell is that he can only see the world through the prism of his own two eyes.

“The Actor” — Johnson’s solo feature debut — is a similarly dream-like film about a man suffering from the exact opposite problem. His name is Paul Cole, he’s a rising star of the New York stage, and we’re first introduced to him on a dark and fateful night in the fictional town of Jeffords, Ohio, where his theater troupe has just performed their latest show. Paul takes a local gal to his hotel room for a nightcap,...

Austin – A work that’s fascinating to discuss and grapple with while not being wholly successful at what it seems to be ultimately setting out to do, director Andre Gaines’ narrative feature debut “The Dutchman” is both a mighty big swing of a film as well as a more confined character study of sorts. Though it’s an interpretation of the late Amiri Baraka’s much-discussed 1964 play “Dutchman”, it is also one that carves out its own distinct territory and leans into the surreal elements of its source material.

Continue reading ‘The Dutchman’ Review: André Holland & Kate Mara Lead Andre Gaines’ Fascinating, But Flawed Adaptation Of Amiri Baraka’s Play [SXSW] at The Playlist.

Although Amiri Baraka’s 1964 play Dutchman is steeped with profound commentary on the era’s racism in the U.S., Andre Gaines’ contemporary adaptation takes the plot and the message to haunting levels.

Co-written by Gaines and Qasim Basir, The Dutchman stars André Holland as Clay, a successful Black man grappling with his wife Kaya’s (Zazie Beetz) infidelity, as well as his own self-perception versus how the world sees him because of the color of his skin. After multiple people in his life tell him it’s only fair for him to step out on the marriage as well, he meets Lula (Kate Mara), a sinister, seductive white woman who knows an alarming amount about him.

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes,” the film’s opening reads, quoting Carl Jung.

Nearly two years after the killing of 30-year old Black man Jordan Neely on a New York City subway,...

In The Dutchman, Andre Gaines retrofits Amiri Baraka’s caustic play about a fatal encounter between a reserved Black man and a roguish white woman for the modern age. He intensifies the dramatic work’s surrealist undertones and takes the central couple’s story above ground. No longer confined to the claustrophobic interior of a train car, Clay (André Holland) and Lula (Kate Mara) gain greater contemporary resonance but also lose some of their edge.

When Dutchman opened at the Cherry Lane Theater in 1964, its acerbic take on the relationship between white and Black Americans shocked audiences. One critic called the Off-Broadway production, which later won an Obie award, “an explosion of hatred.” He wondered: “If this is the way even one Negro feels there is ample cause for guilt as well as alarm, and for the hastening of change.”

This slim play (it was only half an hour) debuted...

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Hulu is ready with an entertainment-packed March this year. The upcoming month will see the release of the brilliant crime comedy-drama series Deli Boys and the streaming release of the award-winning film Anora. Just like every month, Hulu is ready to overload you with great content. So, we’re here to tell you about the 7 new movies and TV shows coming to Hulu in March 2025.

Deli Boys Season 1 (March 6) Credit – Hulu

Deli Boys is an upcoming crime dark comedy-drama series created by Abdullah Saeed. The Hulu series follows two Pakistani American brothers who are suddenly put in charge of the family-owned convenience store after their father suddenly dies. They soon realize that their father was mixed up in some dangerous criminal activities, and now they must take up his mantle to continue the family business. Deli Boys stars Asif Ali,...

Keke Palmer took home entertainer of the year and The Six Triple Eight won two awards, including best motion picture, at the 2025 NAACP Image Awards Saturday night.

The Tyler Perry-directed Netflix film also won for best actress in a motion picture, with a truly shocked Kerry Washington accepting that prize.

“You know how on awards shows when people look surprised, I never believed that they’re really surprised, until Beyoncé at the Grammys,” Washington said. “But I’m just shocked. I’m shocked. Because the women that I’m nominated with are so extraordinary. I love you all so much. I’m honored to be in a category with you.”

She went on to thank her family and the team behind the movie as well as “most importantly,” “the women of ‘The Six Triple Eight’: the 855 women of ‘The Six Triple Eight, who proved to us how extraordinary Black women are,...

The 2025 NAACP Image Awards honored the best in Black excellence for the past year and we have the full list of winners!

The awards were given out across several nights with the main ceremony held on Saturday night (February 22) at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium in Pasadena, Calif.

The show, hosted by Deon Cole, aired live on CBS.

Keke Palmer won the Entertainer of the Year award and Outstanding Motion Picture went to The Six Triple Eight, with the film’s star Kerry Washington also taking home the Best Actress prize.

Make sure to check out our recap of all the celebs who walked the red carpet.

Head inside to check out the complete list of winners…

Keep scrolling to see the full list of winners…

Entertainer of the Year

Cynthia Erivo

Keke Palmer – Winner

Kendrick Lamar

Kevin Hart

Shannon Sharpe

Outstanding Social Media Personality of the Year

Kai Cenat

Keith Lee...

"There's something wrong me, Edna. I don't know who I am!" Neon has unveiled an official trailer for an intriguing new film titled The Actor, starring Andre Holland as actor Paul Cole. Neon already has this set for release in March - even though it hasn't shown up at any festivals before then. It's the latest feature film made by the filmmaker who made the stop-motion animation film Anomalisa back in 2017. When New York actor Paul Cole is beaten and left for dead in 1950s Ohio, he loses his memory and finds himself stranded in a mysterious small town where he struggles to get back home and reclaim what he's lost. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer. As bits & pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery, appearances can't be trusted,...

“The Actor”, the new live-action ‘crime-mystery’ feature, based on the 2010 novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake is directed by Duke Johnson, starring André Holland, Gemma Chan, May Calamawy, Olwen Fouéré, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney, Joe Cole, Tracey Ullman, Tanya Reynolds, Asim Chaduhry, Youssef Kerkour, Edward Hogg, Thomas Dominique, Fabien Frankel and Scott Alexander Young, releasing March 14, 2025 in theaters:

“…’Paul Cole’ (Holland) finds himself stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here.

“Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer ‘Edna’ (Chan).

“As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery, appearances can’t be trusted, and it’s unclear which of his identities is real…”

Click the images to enlarge…...

Neon and Anomalisa director Duke Johnson are bringing something twisty and mysterious this Wednesday with a trailer for The Actor, a bizarre amnesiac tale filled with mischief, misinformation, and malcontents. It stars André Holland as a man with no memory surrounded by suspicious characters and a beautiful stranger who wants to help him solve the mystery of his past and become a part of his future.

Here’s the official synopsis for The Actor courtesy of Neon:

“Based on the novel Memory by Donald E. Westlake, The Actor finds Paul Cole (Holland) stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer (Chan). As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery,...

Neon has unveiled the official trailer and teaser poster for “The Actor,” an upcoming noir drama directed by Duke Johnson, known for co-directing the animated film “Anomalisa.” This marks Johnson’s live-action directorial debut. The film is set to hit theaters on March 14, 2025.

Based on Donald E. Westlake’s 2010 novel “Memory,” “The Actor” stars André Holland as Paul Cole, a man who finds himself stranded in a mysterious small town with no recollection of his identity or how he arrived there. As he starts anew, he forms a relationship with local costume designer Edna, portrayed by Gemma Chan. As fragments of his past gradually surface, Paul endeavors to uncover his true self, navigating a reality where time is elusive and appearances are deceptive.

The supporting cast includes May Calamawy, Olwen Fouéré, Toby Jones, Simon McBurney, Joe Cole, Tracey Ullman, Tanya Reynolds, Asim Chaudhry, Youssef Kerkour, Edward Hogg, Thomas Dominique, Fabien Frankel,...

Neon is behind a new memory thriller titled, “The Actor,” from director Duke Johnson and the studio has unleashed a trailer for the upcoming pic based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake with a script penned by Stephen Cooney and Johnson. The studio has sent along a trailer for the pic and gives audiences some insight into what to expect ahead of the film’s release on March 14.

Continue reading ‘The Actor’ Trailer: André Holland, Gemma Chan, May Calamawy & More Star In Duke Johnson’s New Memory Thriller at The Playlist.

He’s challenged society in Moonlight, taken on the forces of evil in American Horror Story: Roanoke, and picked up the pen of one of history’s most influential sports writers in 42. Still, André Holland will soon step into his biggest role yet when he appears as the titular character in The Actor. Today, Neon has revealed the debut trailer and first-look poster for the upcoming film and the latest title to come from filmmaker, Duke Johnson, following his 2015 trippy stop-motion flick, Anomalisa. With a cast that also includes Crazy Rich Asians and Don’t Worry Darling’s Gemma Chan, the trailer teases one man’s mind-bending journey back to himself.

After co-helming Anomalisa with Charlie Kaufman, we’ve long anticipated Duke Johnson’s next feature The Actor. A decade since the filmmaker’s last film, the drama is finally set for a release from Neon, and it’s much sooner than expected. The André Holland-led noir will open in theaters in less than a month, on March 14, and the first trailer and poster have now arrived.

Here’s the synopsis: “Based on the novel Memory by Donald E. Westlake, The Actor finds Paul Cole (Holland) stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer Edna (Chan). As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery, appearances can’t be trusted, and...

“The Actor” is ready to wake up.

The new movie, from “Anomalisa” director Duke Johnson, stars André Holland and Gemma Chan, and you can watch the brand-new trailer right now.

The official synopsis notes that the story follows “Paul Cole (Holland) stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer Edna (Chan). As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery, appearances can’t be trusted and it’s unclear which of his identities is real.”

May Calamawy, Asim Chaudhry, Joe Cole, Fabien Frankel, Olwen Fouéré, Edward Hogg, Toby Jones, Youssef Kerkour, Simon McBurney, Tanya Reynolds, Tracey Ullman and Scott Alexander Young also star.

What’s fascinating about “The Actor” is that...

Duke Johnson is making his solo directing debut with the highly-anticipated noir, “The Actor.”

Johnson reunites with his “Anomalisa” co-director Charlie Kaufman to executive produce “The Actor,” which stars André Holland as a man who realizes he has no idea what his true identity is after surviving a brutal attack in 1950s Ohio. Johnson co-wrote the script with Stephen Cooney, which is based on the novel “Memory” by Donald E. Westlake.

The official synopsis reads: “Paul Cole (Holland) is stranded in a mysterious small town with no memory of who he is or how he got here. Without a sense of identity or purpose, he starts from scratch and begins courting a local costume designer Edna (Gemma Chan). As bits and pieces of his past slowly emerge, he attempts to find his way home, but time is slippery, appearances can’t be trusted, and it’s unclear which of his identities is real.

After an incredible third installment, the hit sci-fi horror series From was renewed for a 10-episode fourth season in November 2024, and fans have been buzzing with excitement ever since. Everyone wants to know what new horrors await the residents of the nightmarish town, but unfortunately, we won't be seeing this beloved show return to our screens until sometime next year.

From season 4 was confirmed for a 2026 release when the renewal was announced. Production on the fourth season is slated to begin this year in Nova Scotia, where the previous three seasons were shot, but a filming start date has not been revealed. Also, given that this show heavily utilizes special effects, we can likely expect a longer post-production period. This is likely the reason why we won't be seeing From season 4 until next year. It's the lengthy filmmaking process. While this is extremely disappointing for fans, we're expecting the wait...

A catch-all phrase popularized over a decade ago by Meta (formerly Facebook), “It’s complicated,” meant to describe romantic relationships that didn’t fall into one particular category or another, finds its clearest, nearest, and obviously it’s most recent application in director Rachael Abigail Holder’s sweetly optimistic, sharply insightful, emotionally resonant feature-length debut, Love, Brooklyn. Love, Brooklyn centers on a trio of 30-something Black Brooklynites, Roger (André Holland), a perpetually procrastinating magazine writer; Casey (Nicole Beharie), an art gallery owner and Roger’s ex; and Nicole (DeWanda Wise), the new woman and possibly long-term partner in Roger’s life. Roger faces an all-important deadline on a major essay on Brooklyn, past, present, and future. Despite the financial success of her art gallery, Casey...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

New York City, specifically the streets of Brooklyn, becomes the backdrop to a timeless love story that also encompasses the notion of letting go. In Love, Brooklyn, André Holland plays freelance writer Roger, who is struggling to write a letter to his city, one that is always changing. The drama is Rachael Abigail Holder's feature debut, coming from the experience of directing television episodes and playwriting, collaborating with screenwriter Paul Zimmerman to present us with a layered, heartfelt, and humorous tale of acceptance.

In Love, Brooklyn, Rachael Abigail Holder explores hesitation, desire, and stagnation against Brooklyn’s changing landscape. The protagonist, Roger, played by André Holland, exists between his past with Casey and a potential future with Nicole, a single mother sharing his emotional complexity.

Through late-night encounters and bike rides across empty streets, Roger’s relationships reveal his internal conflict: the tension between remembrance and necessary transformation.

The film’s narrative explores the quiet emotional state of a city emerging from isolation, reflecting the characters’ personal challenges. The urban environment becomes a metaphor for personal transition—both challenging and inevitable.

Roger, Casey, and Nicole are connected by unresolved emotions, struggling to progress while clinging to familiar pain. Their journey represents survival in a shifting world that demands adaptation despite deep-rooted hesitations. The city emerges as a dynamic entity, continuously pulling characters toward an uncertain future they resist yet cannot escape.

The Quiet...

You can feel the warm breeze filtering through Love, Brooklyn, a gentle, dream-like summer movie that often teeters on the edge of reality. Rachael Abigail Holder’s debut feature, written by Paul Zimmerman, doesn’t necessarily drift in and out of abstract fantasy, but her vision of this rapidly evolving borough sometimes looks like it belongs to an alternate dimension. The night streets, the parks, and the bars are all practically empty. The Fort Greene and Bed-Stuy neighborhoods look pristine, uncluttered, undefined. And everyone involved in this triangular romantic drama has a vague vocation that allows them an altogether luxurious lifestyle. Everything is a little too good to be true.

That starts with Roger (André Holland), a writer struggling to type out an essay he’s been assigned about the gentrification and evolution of Brooklyn. It’s a ripe subject, and Zimmerman uses the idea as a thematic backdrop for his script.

For her debut feature “Love, Brooklyn,” director Rachael Abigail Holder knew she “really wanted to play my own song.” But she did so with a script she came across that was a love letter to the city of Brooklyn — but one in which all the characters were initially white.

“Their culture wasn’t defined, so I could fill in the paint in that way,” Holder said at the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox. “A script originally written for white characters needed a culture to be infused into to it, so it wasn’t really a challenge, it was an exciting venture to choose what that culture would be. We didn’t just want the characters to be Black period. Blackness is a wide scope of people, and I wanted them to be specific.”

“Love, Brooklyn” stars André Holland, Roy Wood Jr., DeWanda Wise, Nicole Beharie, and Cassandra Freeman. The story...

The two opposing poles of the Sundance Film Festival are always the overly familiar and the cloyingly offbeat. Too many films fall at the extremes of either side, yet those in the middle are easily written off as “Sundance films” that cram buzzwords together into their own uniquely twee packaging.

André Holland’s Sundance romance “Love, Brooklyn” almost never saw the light of day.

The actor and producer recounted the long process of finding financing for the Black-led project from director Rachael Holder and writer Paul Zimmerman, sharing in TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World Hyatt that “we knocked on all the doors and did all the pitches,” but nothing was sticking.

“We had this script and were out to all the places that everyone goes to to get financing,” Holland told TheWrap executive editor Adam Chitwood. “People just, I think, didn’t share the vision. They didn’t quite see the value, but that’s often the case.”

Holland said it wasn’t until he chatted with his former “The Knick” director, Steven Soderbergh, who soon signed on as an executive producer, that things got moving with production for the film.

“Steven and I started a relationship many,...

Park City – An understated yet still thoughtful drama about three people navigating their lives, relationships, and futures, director Rachael Abigail Holder’s “Love, Brooklyn” is one of those works that could easily be overlooked in the hustle and bustle of a film festival even though it very much shouldn’t. Without ever flagging up its more significant ideas, it gradually works its way into your heart and mind while remaining deeply attuned to the rhythms of its characters.

Continue reading ‘Love, Brooklyn’ Review: André Holland, Nicole Beharie, & DeWanda Wise Make For A Winning Trio In Lowkey Dramedy [Sundance] at The Playlist.

Marlee Matlin is an Oscar winner for her work in “Children of a Lesser God,” and starred in the 2021 film “Coda,” which won the Oscar for best picture, but she feels that Hollywood is so rigid that it hasn’t necessarily given her advantage when it comes to pitching projects.

“I’m not happy with the way things are,” she says. “It’s simply because I don’t know how this industry works to this day. You know, you win an Academy Award, everybody’s so excited. ‘Oh, that’s great. Things are gonna change. It’s fantastic. You’re gonna be working, offers are gonna come in,’ and they didn’t. Yes, you’ll be on that high, it lasts maybe a short little time, and then something comes up again a little while later. So what I do is I have to do it myself. I create my own projects.