{"id":351201,"date":"2026-03-27T21:07:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:07:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351201\/"},"modified":"2026-03-27T21:07:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T21:07:10","slug":"the-ai-doc-forbidden-fruits-a-magnificent-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/351201\/","title":{"rendered":"‘The AI Doc’, ‘Forbidden Fruits’, ‘A Magnificent Life’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tAn accessibly human exploration of artificial intelligence, a high-end coven at the mall and the latest from French directors Julia Ducournau (Alpha<\/a>) and Sylvain Chomet (A Magnificent Life<\/a>) are among indie offerings this weekend in an eclectic market peppered with the serious, the funny, the dark and the literary. Matthew Shear and Oscar Boyson make their respective directorial debuts with Fantasy Life<\/a> and Our Hero, Balthazar.<\/p>\n

\n\tFocus Features\u2019 The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist<\/a>, Oscar-winning director Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell\u2019s exploration of one of humanity\u2019s most significant and riskiest advances, materializes at 782 theaters after lively debuts at Sundance and SXSW with critics and audiences joining the intense global conversation around artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAn \u2018apocaloptimist\u2019 is someone who does not give into binary,\u201d Roher said in a conversation at Deadline\u2019s Sundance Studio.<\/a> \u201cWhen being asked to choose between a perspective of apocalyptic doom or unbridled optimism, the apocaloptimist seeks the third way, the narrow path, recognizing that both of these things exist simultaneously and what we\u2019re advocating for and needing is a very cautious optimism because we have the intelligence to build this technology, but we need to have the wisdom to deploy it and incorporate it into our world.\u201d The doc follows Roher, a father-to-be, as he tries to make sense of the existential dangers and stunning promise of this technology that humanity has created.<\/p>\n

\n\tProduced by filmmakers behind\u00a0Everything Everywhere All at Once\u00a0and Navalny \u2014 Daniel Kwan and Jonathan Wang, Shane Boris, Diane Becker and Ted Tremper.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOne of the things our film hopes to do is to give people ownership of basically their agency to learn about this in an entertaining and comprehensive way,\u201d Tremper told Deadline.<\/p>\n

\n\tIFC Entertainment Group\u2019s campy coven comedy Forbidden Fruits<\/a> flies onto 1,562 screens with a viral campaign anchored by a buzzy cast. Director Meredith Alloway\u2019s feature debut stars Lilly Reinhart as Apple, leader of a group of witches operating out of an upscale mall boutique called Free Eden. She and her minions Cherry (Pedretti) and Fig (Shipp) bring in Pumpkin (Tung) as the fourth member of their coven. Each fruit represents a season of the retail cycle.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Forbidden Fruits\u2019 Star Lili Reinhart Unpacks \u201c180\u201d Role Of Apple & \u201c200-Pin Pinterest Board\u201d Of Inspo For Meredith Alloway\u2019s Witchy Cult Film \u2013 SXSW Studio<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tCo-written by Alloway and Lily Houghton based on the latter\u2019s 2019 play\u00a0Of the Woman Came the Beginning of Sin, and Through Her We All Die. Deadline\u2019s review<\/a> said the sendup of millennial, Gen Z and mall culture has \u201call the makings of an instant cult classic.\u201d It also has a similar release footprint to IFC\u2019s viral box office hit Good Boy last year. <\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Alpha\u2019 Director Julia Ducournau & Co-Star Tahar Rahim Talk Drama Inspired By Early Years Of AIDS Epidemic \u2013 Cannes Studio<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tJulia Ducournau\u2019s Alpha from Neon opens in moderate release on 225 screens. The French director\u2019s follow-up to her 2021 Palme d\u2019Or-winning Titane<\/a> also premiered on the Croisette, see Deadline review<\/a>. Stars M\u00e9lissa Boros as Alpha, a troubled 13-year-old living with her doctor single mother (Golshifteh Farahani). Their world collapses one day when the girl returns from school with a tattoo on her arm in a family drama that unfolds against an apocalyptic backdrop of addict-infested clubs as a deadly virus circulates. With Tahar Rahim, Emma Mackey, Finnegan Oldfield and Louai El Amrousy.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: Horror Movies\u2019 Next Wave: What\u2019s Coming In 2026, From Auteur Nightmares To Indie Breakouts<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tSony Pictures Classics is out with animated A Magnificent Life written and directed by Sylvain Chomet (The Triplets of Belleville, The Illusionist) at 334 locations. This is a fully animated biopic of the life of the late novelist, playwright and filmmaker Marcel Pagnol, including clips from his films. An actor plays Pagnol in voice-over. Chomet\u2019s first animated film in 15 years debuted at Cannes and played at the Annecy Animation Film Festival (Deadline review here<\/a>), where he debuted short The Old Lady and the Pigeons in 1997.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: The 25 Highest-Grossing Animated Films Of All Time At The Global Box Office<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tIn 1955, 60-year-old Pagnol is an acclaimed playwright and filmmaker when Elle magazine commissions a weekly column about his childhood. He grabs the opportunity to return to his roots. But, realizing his memory is failing and badly shaken by the disappointing results of his last two plays, Pagnol is wracked by doubt until his younger self, Little Marcel, appears. Together, they explore the writer\u2019s life.<\/p>\n

\n\tGreenwich Entertainment presents romance-comedy-drama Fantasy Life at the Angelika Film Center in NYC. The debut feature of actor-turned-writer\/director Matthew Shear won multiple prizes, including the Narrative Feature Audience Award<\/a> at SXSW 2025, see Deadline\u2019s review<\/a>. Stars Shear as an anxious law school dropout who stumbles into a job babysitting his psychiatrist\u2019s three granddaughters and falls for the girls\u2019 mother (Amanda Peet), an actress in a rocky marriage. With Alessandro Nivola, Judd Hirsch, Bob Balaban, Andrea Martin, Zosia Mamet and Holland Taylor.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: SXSW 2025: All Of Deadline\u2019s Movie Reviews<\/a><\/p>\n

\n\tPicturehouse debuts Our Hero, Balthazar at Regal Union Square in NYC. The feature debut of writer-director Oscar Boyson, whose producer credits include films with the Safdies (Uncut Gems, Good Time) and Frances Ha. Stars Asa Butterfield (Sex Education) and Jaeden Martell lead an ensemble including Chris Bauer, Jennifer Ehle, Anna Baryshnikov,\u00a0Noah Centineo, Becky Ann Baker, Avan Jogia and Pippa Knowles.<\/p>\n

\n\tEager to impress his activist crush, a wealthy New York teenager follows an online connection to Texas, where he\u2019s convinced he can stop an act of extreme violence. Premiered at Tribeca. Deadline review<\/a> says the film \u201cimpressively mixes black comedy\u00a0with real-life consequences for two mismatched teens.\u201d\u00a0Expands to L.A. next weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An accessibly human exploration of artificial intelligence, a high-end coven at the mall and the latest from French…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351202,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[186152,44748,156,186153,142671,409,111,139,93818,69,184909,103991,150165],"class_list":["post-351201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-a-magnificent-life","tag-alpha","tag-entertainment","tag-fantasy-life","tag-forbidden-fruits","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-novid","tag-nz","tag-our-hero-balthazar","tag-specialty-preview","tag-the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351201"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351201\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}