'A Statement' Review: Tom McCarthy's Talky Climate Crisis Seriocomedy - IndieWire

In a hotel conference room overlooking the ocean in St. Petersburg, Florida, two men putter over how to arrange a series of tables ahead of an important meeting. (Or a meeting that sounds important, anyway.) Congress, meanwhile, is ready to act on what it has identified as the impending risk of carbon dioxide emissions. It's October 1980, and the banality of what humans are trying to do to solve the climate crisis is about to collide with the greatness of a threat as vast as the ocean beyond the window. Yet despite warnings from Irish physicist John Tyndall in 1859, the fear of climate change is only now coming semantically into view, more than a century later. Writer/director Tom McCarthy ("Spotlight") is a nimble maneuverer of stories mostly made up of talk, and where talk is often cheap, and where words fail to articulate historical truth despite humankind's bravest, unrewarded efforts. His latest film, "A Statement," opens a pinhole into a true-life episode out of Nathaniel Rich's nonfiction climate change history book "Losing Earth," where a Congress-tasked ad hoc commission convened at the DonCesar beachfront resort to "solve" the CO2 problem.

Marvel Studios’ release of Avengers: Endgame: Encore was a shrewd gambit for a few reasons: It put the studio’s most successful film back in conversation right after the juggernaut success of Spider-Man: Brand New Day; it tided die-hards over with new footage ahead of December’s Avengers: Doomsday; and, perhaps most importantly, it raked in an additional $138 million for the film, reinstating its position as the worldwide box office champion over James Cameron’s Avatar. Cameron, who certainly doesn’t spend his precious time fretting about such matters as lifetime financial grosses and being the best in the world at stuff, recently expressed his congratulations to Marvel for once again overtaking his 2009 sci-fi film. “You are one of the people,” the director wrote (per The Wrap) in a composite image from Avatar, with Iron Man at the center of a welcoming Na’vi tribe. “Congratulations to Marvel and the #1 Avengers: Endgame: Encore for bringing moviegoers to the cinemas! – Jim Cameron.”