Kristen Stewart x 3

1. Film Comment Cover Girl
In case you haven't heard, the summer issue of Film Comment, one of our favorite magazines since forever, is out. You can purchase it here. And guess what? Our friend and podcast mate Nick Davis wrote the cover story "The Age of Kristen Stewart" 

The twenty-six year old actress works non-stop. She'll soon hit 40 movies and she only started 15 years ago. (The first movie that people tend to remember her from is Panic Room as Jodie Foster's daughter.) She has not one but three movies this year, hence the cover story, with two hitting theaters simultaneously today.

2. Cafe Society 
Now Playing Limited Release
Woody Allen's new movie (they tend to expand quickly so if you're not on the coasts you probably only have a week or two to wait) is a melancholy dramedy. Jesse Eisenberg is a young up-and-comer who ditches working for his powerful uncle (Steve Carell) in Hollywood for nightclub hosting fame with his brother (Corey Stoll) in New York City. Kristen Stewart and Blake Lively are his love interests on each coast. Our Review ICYMI.

3. Equals
Now Playing Limited Release
We weren't personally wild about Drake Doremus's breakthrough Like Crazy (2011) though Anton Yelchin (*sniffle*) was great in it, but we appreciate that a young director is committed to romantic narratives. Doremus's new film is a dystopian sci-fi romance starring KStew and Nicholas Hoult. Here's the trailer.

Tribeca Drops First Half of Festival Program, Chocked Full of Potential Discoveries

Daniel Crooke here, salivating over today’s first wave of films from the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival’s line-up. While the Spotlight, Midnight, and Special Sections programs won’t drop until March 8, the US Narrative, International Narrative, and World Documentary Competitions, and Viewpoints showcase hit the internet today and there’s plenty to buzz about. Scanning the films, you’ll find an embarrassment of riches hiding in the programming, plot details, and cast lists. Here are some personal points of interest:

US Narrative Competition

Ingrid Jungermann’s webseries F to 7^th was an astutely, hysterically observed slice of queer life in New York, giving voice to a uniquely cutting female perspective in the process, so her feature debut Women Who Kill shoots straight to the top of the list. The Fixer sounds intriguing in a small-town-with-secrets kind way, James Franco as an “eccentric local” a little less so. Queens of charting the path from comfortable malaise to all-out soul-search, Amy Landecker and Melanie Lynskey – who, in particular, is quietly giving the best lead performance on television – pop up in Dreamland and Folk Hero & Funny Guy. Current faves Keith Stanfield (Short Term 12, Straight Outta Compton) and Dan Stevens (The Guest) will star in Live Cargo and The Ticket.

International Narrative Competition

It’s hard to ignore the promise of a collection of short films from the likes of Chilean shaggydog provocateur Sebastian Silva and actors Mia Wasikowska and Gael Garcia Bernal in Madly, sounding like an I Love You, anthology movie but if the city were Relentless. Argentine Cinema had the international stage last year with the raucous Wild Tales – although Lucretia Martel eternally has her own platform in my heart – so fingers crossed for another cross-hemispheric success with The Tenth Man (El Rey Del Once) and its culturally and generationally intersectional premise.

World Documentary Competition & Viewpoints

Documentary-wise, Betting On Zero positions Herbalife as a pyramid scheme, Do Not Resist exposes the military-industrial nature of America’s police culture, and LoveTrue boasts the wacko cred of (my Northeast Los Angeles neighbor) Flying Lotus on score and Shia LaBeouf as executive producer. Equals with Kristen Stewart and Nic Hoult premieres in the Viewpoints program, along with raunchy R-rated animation Nerdland (trend-chillin’ with Anomalisa and Annapurna’s Sausage Party) and the divisive British class flick High-Rise.

You can view the list of released Tribeca titles here – what catches your eye?

Equals Poster & Teaser

Manuel here. After premiering at Toronto last year, Drake Doremus's (Like Crazy) sci-fi romance Equals is headed our way soon via A24. And perhaps as a way to dispel the mixed-reaction this Kristen Stewart/Nicholas Hoult flick got at the busy Canadian festival, we've been given two beautiful pieces of marketing: a gorgeous one-sheet poster (with the nevertheless corny tagline, "Find your equal") and a Chromatics-scored teaser trailer that shows us the sleek and slate future Doremus has cooked up.

In case the beautifully bleak futuristic visuals don't give it away, the film centers on a dystopian future where human emotions have been eradicated...or have they? There really is only one way a plot like that develops but it'll make a nice addition to this growing romance-deconstruction-via-sci-fi genre to which Spike Jonze, Alex Garland, and Jonathan Glazer have treated us in these past few years.

Check out the teaser below and discuss with us whether anyone could really resist Hoult's cheekbones, even or especially, when told not to.