MovieMaker

Fisher Stevens' career in film has spanned four decades as an actor, writer, producer, and director. His latest movie as a director is Palmer, a very good indie drama in which ex-con Palmer (Justin Timberlake) returns to the small Louisiana town where he grew up and, through a series of events, ends up caring for 7-year-old Sam (Ryder Allen), a boy who is bullied for liking princesses, dresses, and dolls.

You can see Palmer now in select theaters and on Apple TV+.

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Richard Kelly released his debut feature Donnie Darko in 2001 when he was just 25 years old. Five years later he brought an unfinished version of his follow-up, a sprawling sci-fi dark comedy called Southland Tales, to the Cannes Film Festival. It didn't go well. Roger Ebert called it one of the worst screenings in Cannes history.

Sony eventually released the finished cut of Kelly's movie, but barely promoted it and only distributed it to a handful of theaters. Southland Tales bombed and mostly fell out of the public's consciousness.

But over the past few years, the movie began building a new audience and has now become a bonafide cult favorite.

Kelly just released the "Cannes cut" of Southland Tales on Blu-ray—it's the first time this maligned version of the film has been officially released for a wide audience. We talked to Kelly about why he made the choice to release the cut, as well as his plans for the future of the Southland Tales universe.

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For the third consecutive year, Albuquerque is the No. 1 Big City on MovieMaker's list of the Best Places to Live and Work as a Moviemaker. Nearby Santa Fe is No. 2 on the list of smaller cities and towns.

How is the Land of Enchantment drawing powerhouses like Netflix and NBCUniversal?

Alicia J. Keyes, Cabinet Secretar of New Mexico's Economic Development Department, tells us why they love it — and why you just might love it, too. She knows firsthand, after moving to New Mexico from California.

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Derek DelGaudio and Frank Oz stop by to talk about In & Of Itself, the film adaptation of their much beloved stage show.

Frank Oz is a legendary director, an actor, and the puppeteer who brought to life characters like Yoda, Miss Piggy, and Grover.

Derek DelGaudio is a storyteller, performance artist, and illusionist. He wrote In & Of Itself and has performed it onstage more than 700 times.

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Veteran editor, director, and producer Sam Pollard joins us to discuss his new documentary, MLK/FBI, which examines the FBI's relentless surveillance of Martin Luther King, Jr.

FBI director J. Edgar Hoover hoped to discredit MLK by uncovering and revealing details of the civil rights icon's private life. The surveillance campaign became Hoover's obsessive pursuit.

The movie utilizes a trove of newly declassified documents, as well as a wealth of archival footage—much of which will be new to most viewers.

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Travon Free is an acclaimed standup comedian who has won Emmys for The Daily Show and Full Frontal With Samantha Bee. But his debut film, Two Distant Strangers, is anything but funny. In a horrific twist on time-loop films like Groundhog Day and Palm Springs, Joey Bada$$ plays a man who keeps being racially profiled and shot by the same police officer. Free wrote the film and co-directs with Martin Desmond Roe.

We talk about the impressive lengths Free went to to get hired on The Daily Show, how he wrote and filmed Two Distant Strangers during the pandemic, and why right now is the best time to start writing.

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Regina King's One Night in Miami imagines a historic night in 1964 when Malcolm X, Jim Brown, Sam Cooke and Cassius Clay (who will soon change his name to Muhammad Ali) gather together to celebrate one of Clay's biggest wins. But the gathering doesn't go as everyone expected.

King takes us through her incredible career as an Oscar, Golden Globe, and four-time Emmy winner, with stories about watching films with John Singleton, a Tom Cruise prank on the set of Jerry Maguire, and learning how to play a cop. And she talks about her journey to directing her first feature — and the many breakthrough moments along the way.

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In Pieces of a Woman, Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó and writer Kata Wéber explore their own tragedy, in the hopes that it will make it easier for other couples to heal. The film stars Vanessa Kirby as a woman who suffers a terrible loss, and includes a 24-minute birth scene astonishing in both its empathy and virtuosity.

Mundruczó's explanation of whose point of view we're seeing adds another layer of emotion to a powerful, beautiful film.

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Deon Taylor and Roxanne Avent are the husband and wife duo behind Hidden Empire Film Group. The “first generation” moviemaker pair have worked together for 15 years and are entirely self-taught in the directing and producing realms.

Their latest is Fatale, a throwback to the erotic thrillers of the ’80s and ’90s, which stars Hilary Swank as a femme fatale who snares a sports agent played by Michael Ealy in her web. Italian cinematographer Dante Spinotti (Heat, L.A. Confidential) bathes this noir version of Los Angeles in neon blues and violets.

Also in this episode, Taylor describes the huge compliment he got from Dennis Quaid.

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A few years ago, filmmakers Charles Beale and Jess Jacklin felt like the film festival circuit wasn't working for them, so they thought about what their perfect festival would look like — and then started it. It's called StudioFest, and it's already released one award-winning film.

As you'll gather, Jess and Charles are incredibly transparent about what they're doing — and they get into a lot of specifics, and numbers, in their web series and podcast Demystified, presented by MovieMaker. You can submit a script or film to StudioFest.com.

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