Independent films opening June 21: ‘Kinds of Kindness’ and ‘Thelma’

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After being kicked out of the park with Bad things Last year, director Yorgos Lanthimos and star Emma Stone made a comeback at the box office Types of kindness from Searchlight, which looks set to shake up the sluggish art market with the best limited opening of the year.

The best PTA in 2024 so far is Taste of things From IFC Films, which debuted to $43.4K on three screens in February. Types of charity Its five locations in New York (Angelika, AMC Lincoln Square) and Los Angeles (AMC Burbank, AMC Grove, AMC Century City) will get ahead of that, perhaps significantly. It’s been a weird market so it’s hard to say how big it is yet. Tune in on Sunday.

Also this weekend, Thelma, which delighted audiences with the brilliant June Squibb, was released on 1,280 screens, the widest release ever by distributor Magnolia Pictures. A24 Janet Planet, the first feature film from Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker, premieres in New York. Vertical also boasts its wider release with Exorcism Starring Russell Crowe.

Types of kindness It had its world premiere in Cannes, see Deadline’s review, where Jesse Plemons won Best Actor, and then hit the global festival circuit. It was not. 1 in Greece, home of Lanthimos, when it opened on the weekend of May 30.

The film is divided into three different stories with the same cast – an anthology described as a “triple tale, following a man with no choice who tries to take control of his life; a policeman who is worried that his wife lost at sea has returned and appears to be a different person; and a woman determined to find a specific person with a special ability.” , and is destined to become an amazing spiritual leader, the stories are named RMF dies, RMF fly And RMF eats a sandwich – RFM is a silent, bearded man wearing a monogrammed T-shirt.

Lanthimos (Poor things, favorites, lobster, dogtooth) wrote the screenplay with collaborator Efthymis Filippou. Stone, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress Bad things, Plemons stars with Willem Dafoe, Margaret Qualley, Hong Chow, Mamoudou Athie, Joe Alwyn and Hunter Schaeffer. The staff has toured with Jimmy Kimmel Live!, the today Displays, Late Night with Seth Meyers And The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

Produced by Ed Guiney of Element Pictures (Poor things, favorites(Andrew Lowe)Bad things), Cassia Maliban (Bad things), and Lanthimos.

It is expanding to about 500 showrooms in key markets next week and more than 1,000 showrooms in the following markets.

Meanwhile, Magnolia is betting big Thelma, Sundance’s uproarious, poignant comedy earned the festival a competitive edge. Deadline’s review described Josh Margolin’s debut as a “hilarious action comedy set in the twilight years.”

Academy Award nominee June Squibb (nebraska) stars in her first leading role at age 94 as Thelma, an elderly grandmother who is conned by a con artist impersonating her 24-year-old grandson, Daniel. She mails a large sum of money, no questions asked.

In real life, many millions have been lost to this common scam. But Thelma, embarrassed and angry, can’t take it and races across Los Angeles on an electric bike to track down the fraudster and get her money back. Fred Hechinger (White lotus) is Daniel, a slacker who loves his grandmother. Parker Posey and Clark Gregg are his mother (Thelma’s daughter) and father (thelma’s son-in-law). The late Richard Roundtree is Ben’s boyfriend.

This is the movie that most people have seen and loved. But you have to see it. It’s about aging, with an older star, at a time when older audiences have generally been slow to return to theaters.

Dory Begley, Magnolia’s CEO, sees broader appeal. “Older audiences will still come out once in a while to get the right movie, but far from that expected demographic, younger audiences have shown a great affection for sharp-tongued women of a certain age, and Josh has expertly exploited that affection,” she told Deadlne. “The team behind this film also belongs very much to a younger generation that doesn’t see their elders as props for tired punchlines, but rather as wise, entertaining, and perfectly capable of driving intelligent comedy. Who better to embody this than June Squibb?”

To get the film in front of as many eyeballs as possible, Magnolia has doubled its efforts with this expanded release. “We knew that if we could get it to a wider audience, everyone would fall in love with it.” Plus, “it’s great counter-programming to a world on fire.”

“We were looking for a film to go further, but nothing worked until the premiere at Sundance. We were very impressed.” [the director’s] Skillful hopping between genres, and ability to bring intergenerational appeal to the film, completely avoiding pandering – something quite unusual in the niche space.

Janet Planet From A24 opens at Lincoln Center and Angelica in New York, expanding next week. It is the debut film from Annie Baker, who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play Flake.

Set in rural Western Massachusetts, the film stars newcomer Zoe Zelger as 11-year-old Lacey, who abandons camp to spend the summer of 1991 at home, entranced by her imagination and the attentions of her mother, Janet, played by Julianne Nicholson. With Elias Koteas, Will Patton and Sophie Okonedo

The movie was his World Premiere in Telluride, see Deadline’s reviewIt is shown at the New York Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival.

With Elias Koteas, Will Patton and Sophie Okonedo.

This is not a specialty, but an independent one. Vertical’s biggest release to date, Exorcism, By Joshua John Miller Opens on 2,000+ screens. It stars Russell Crowe as a troubled actor who begins to unravel while filming a supernatural horror film in which he plays a priest and an exorcist. His estranged daughter (Ryan Simpkins) wonders if he’s slipping back into his past addictions or if there’s something more sinister at play, and turns to the film’s Jesuit priest counselor (David Hyde Pierce) for help. This film-within-a-film, which stars Adam Goldberg as director, was written by Miller and Ma Fortin.

See review deadline. This is personal — the director’s father, actor Jason Miller, played the unfortunate Father Karras in William Friedkin’s 1973 film. And exorcist.

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