As someone who literally knows nothing about the character Doctor Strange, I was not expecting a bald Tilda Swinton to punch Benedict Cumberbatch out of his body in this trailer. It was the first time anything about this project reached out and made me interested, so, good job teaser, you served your purpose. I’m certainly not the only one in the dark about this less-than-prominent superhero, whose name is not as self-explanatory as Ant-Man or the Guardians of the Galaxy.
The unsteady career of director Rob Reiner continues with Being Charlie, a family affair that is very much based on real life. His son Nick Reiner wrote the screenplay (along with Matt Elisofon) about his battles with substance abuse, and the fact that he kept his filmmaking family a part of the plot and got his father to direct makes the real-life parallels unavoidable. Hitting this close to home doesn’t always lead to the best films, though, especially when dealing with something that must’ve happened relatively recently (Nick is currently only 22 years old).
Nobody’s hiding how weird and grotesque Tale of Tales is going to be, and oh how delectable it looks. The adult fairy tale has become a well-used genre of late, and while most draw from the toned down Disney versions or the more bloody Grimm style, there’s a host of other sources out there for filmmakers to start from. Taking that less crowded route is Tale of Tales, which is based on a 17th century Neapolitan collection by Giambattista Basile.
As adorably ludicrous as it is to imagine a cat dragging two mild-mannered men into a gang war, it’s clear that there’s more to Keanu than just a strange premise. The name and setup makes it an overt riff on John Wick and the trailer really keys in on racial preconceptions and how wrong they can be. That’s all well and good, but how about that aww-inducing moment when the cat is running to dramatic music and slides into the back of that guy’s leg?
A startlingly quiet release for star Tom Hanks, the trailer for A Hologram for the King is a hard nut to crack. Is it about a white guy finding himself in the desert of Saudi Arabia? A humorous take on culture clashes?
We knew things would change once Disney got a hold of Star Wars, and as utterly delightful as The Force Awakens was, it was basically the equivalent of clearing the first hurdle in a long race. After all, Disney operates under the ‘keep doing it until everyone hates it’ business model, and the company has made it abundantly clear that fans will be getting new Star Wars movies until they stop turning a profit. The thing is, that’s never been what Star Wars is.
They did it with asteroids, and they did it with Snow White. Now, we’re inexplicably getting two takes on the story of Florence Foster Jenkins, a wealthy New York socialite with a terrible singing voice. The French version, Marguerite, plays more loosely with the facts, while this U.
Before Mads Mikkelsen became an international star as the blood-weeping villain in the James Bond film Casino Royale, he had established himself as one of the most prominent actors in his home country of Denmark, by working with some of the best talent the country has to offer. He got his start on Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher series and has appeared in every film that award-winning Anders Thomas Jensen has directed. To this day, he continues to balance his international work with Danish films, and with Jensen’s return to the directing chair after a ten year absence, Mikkelsen returns as well to keep their long-standing collaboration alive.
Over one million people crossed into Europe in 2015, more than three times the amount from the previous year, overwhelming existing systems and leaving the EU struggling to agree on a unified approach to the crisis. Some countries have tightened their border control, citing old, xenophobic fears that ignore the flesh-and-blood people sitting on their doorsteps. It’s a perfect time, then, for films like Dheepan, which tell small, humanistic stories of immigrants that make us remember the individuals at the heart of this crisis.
A strange and unfortunate thing happened during the run of the American television series Spartacus. The blood and sex-filled show had to delay production and recast its titular lead due to actor Andy Whitfield’s cancer diagnosis. This injection of reality into a pulp show is incongruous, as these situations often are for television series.
So you like John Gallagher Jr., huh? Well, get ready to have that emotion shaken, because in Hush he abandons his usual affability to play a killer toying with a deaf and mute woman.
For the record, I love how much Sam Rockwell we’ve been getting lately. We all know he’s one of the greats, acting in every genre under the sun and excelling at them all. With Mr.
Everyone was shocked by how good The Lego Movie was. Everyone, that is, except Warner Bros. They seemed prepared for success, quickly release a schedule of spin-offs and sequels that would usually cause all sorts of concerns about low-quality cash grabbing, except that’s what many of us thought about The Lego Movie, and boy were we wrong.
The manifesto for this movie is hinted at in the first lines of the trailer and has been reiterated by director/writer/actor Don Cheadle on its press tour: if you’re going to make a film about jazz musician Miles Davis, it better have energy and style. Davis’s music didn’t adhere to formula, so his biopic shouldn’t, either.
To point out that a Richard Linklater project has been long-gestating is almost laughably commonplace, as several of his projects have either taken a long time to get financed or a long time to shoot. He famously filmed Boyhood over 12 years, spread out the Before trilogy over nearly twenty years, and first wrote Everybody Wants Some!! back in the mid-2000’s.