Review Round-Up: “Wonder Woman 1984” is an Adrenalin Shot of Joy
At long last, the time has just about come to see Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) in action once again—director Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984 is just about here. While you’ll need to wait until Christmas Day to see the long-awaited sequel, the critics already have. To that end, we’ve put together a spoiler-free review round-up to give you a sense of what they’re saying.
Let’s get you caught up on where we are in the franchise,
“Wonder Woman 1984” Opening Scene Available For Your Viewing Pleasure
Let’s go back to Themyscira, shall we? Warner Bros. and HBO Max have made Wonder Woman 1984‘s opening scene available a little more than a week before director Patty Jenkins’ film hits theaters and streams on HBO Max on Christmas Day. Now if you’re the type that would rather watch the opening minutes when you can, you know, watch the rest of the film immediately after, we get that. However, if you want to whet your appetite just before you can settle in for the full meal,
“Tenet” Available Online and DVD Today – Watch Opening Scene Here
If there were one movie that best encapsulated this awful year, at least in terms of the entertainment world, it was Christopher Nolan’s Tenet. In a normal year, a Nolan film is a major cinematic event. His ambitious, often mind-melting epics are designed and shot to be seen in the theater. Their release dates are something movie lovers mark on their calendars, and tickets are snapped up the moment they become available online.
Netflix Reveals Trailer Stanley Nelson’s new Doc “Crack: Cocaine, Corruption, & Conspiracy”
You couldn’t ask for a better filmmaker to untangle the lies, distortions, and heartbreak of the crack epidemic of the 1980s than Stanley Nelson. The award-winning filmmaker behind Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Freedom Riders, and The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords is the director of Netflix’s new Crack: Cocaine, Corruption & Conspiracy. A new trailer gives us our first glimpse at Nelson’s latest deep-dive,
DP Bryce Fortner on Recreating the 1970s in the Propulsive Crime Drama “I’m Your Woman”
Director Julie Hart’s new thriller, I’m Your Woman, turns its attention to a figure usually overlooked in 1970s crime dramas: the housewife. Jean (Rachel Brosnahan) seems incapable and alone, dispassionately aware but otherwise innocent of her husband Eddie’s (Bill Heck) nebulous involvement in some kind of organized crime. When Eddie heads out for the night and doesn’t come back, leaving Jean with a mysterious baby boy she’s mutely accepted as their own,
Anthony Mackie is an Android on a Mission in “Outside the Wire”
In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Anthony Mackie plays Sam Wilson, better known as Falcon, a heroic soldier endowed with superhuman ability thanks to technology—including, of course, a pair of wings. So Mackie is well-suited to continue the process of man melding with machine in Netflix’s upcoming Outside the Wire. In the first trailer, you’ll see that Mackie is a straight-up android with a very serious skill set. One can’t help but wonder how Outside the Wire‘s android might stack up against Mackie’s titular superhero in Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
Matt Smith & Olivia Cooke Join “Game of Thrones” Prequel “House of the Dragon”
Two very good actors have joined HBO’s Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon. Matt Smith, so excellent as Prince Phillip on The Crown and the Doctor in Doctor Who joins Ready Player One‘s Olivia Cooke as the newest cast members. The prequel will explore the fall of the Targaryen empire long before Daenerys arrived on the scene to (briefly) restore it. Smith and Cooke join The Outsider‘s Paddy Considine and Truth Seeker’s Emma D’Arcy on this trip back to Westeros.
The Most Exciting Films and Series Coming From Disney & Marvel
Disney’s Investor Day presentation was probably the biggest reveal of exciting projects since 2019’s San Diego Comic-Con. There was just an absolute deluge of news, and so much of it was thrilling. On the Marvel side of the coin, we got our first look at Loki, our first look at The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the bittersweet news that Marvel will not recast Chadwick Boseman’s role in Black Panther II.
First Look at “Andor” Amid Disney’s Reveal of 10 New “Star Wars” Projects
The fruits of a four-hour investor presentation from Disney have been bountiful, to say the least. We got our first look at Loki, our first look at The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, and the bittersweet news that Marvel will not recast Chadwick Boseman’s role in Black Panther II.
In this post, we’re turning our attention to all things Star Wars.
First Look at “Loki” Reveals a Post “Avengers: Endgame” World
There’s just so much news that came out of Disney’s investor presentation yesterday, and one of the most intriguing bits was this first look at Loki. We finally get a peek at what Marvel’s most maladaptive supervillain/sometimes hero—so wonderfully played by Tom Hiddleston—has been up to since we saw him sneak away with the Tesseract in Avengers: Endgame.
Loki comes from Michael Waldron, a Rick and Morty producer and one of the writers on Sam Raimi’s upcoming Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Chadwick Boseman’s T’Challa Will Not Be Recast in “Black Panther II”
Yesterday was Disney’s big investor presentation, which revealed a huge bounty of entertainment news, including all things Marvel Studios-related. One of the most bittersweet things to come from the presentation was that T’Challa, better known as Black Panther, will not be recast in Black Panther II in the wake of the late, great Chadwick Boseman’s death. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige shared the news, which makes perfect sense and is not terribly surprising,
At Long Last Our First Look at “The Falcon and the Winter Soldier”
Yesterday, December 10, was the Walt Disney Company’s Investor Day. This is the reason, folks, that you woke up this morning with a sudden bounty of first looks at some of the most hotly anticipated titles coming to Disney+. We begin with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, which reunites Anthony Mackie’s Sam Wilson and Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes in the new Disney+ series.
“The legacy of that shield is…complicated.” This is the first line from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier‘s teaser,
Javicia Leslie Makes Her Debut as “Batwoman” in Season 2 Trailer
Redesigned Batwoman suit? Check. Brand new Batwoman, period? Double check. The CW has just revealed our first extended look at Javicia Leslie as Batwoman, and it probably goes without saying that Leslie not only rocks the new Batwoman suit with ease, her taking up the cape and cowl augers an exciting new phase for Caroline Dries’ show.
Speaking of that cowl, the new suit boasts a new one that lets Leslie’s natural,
Bob Odenkirk is “Nobody” in First Trailer for Ilya Naishuller’s Film
There are few actors as reliably likable, no matter what kind of lowlife they might be playing, then Bob Odenkirk. In Breaking Bad, a series that was not only one of the best of the century but was bursting with great performances, Odenkirk still stood out as the scruples-free lawyer Saul Goodman. The performance was so good that AMC and Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan spun the character off for his own,
Jo Ellen Pellman & Ariana DeBose on Finding Love & Acceptance in Ryan Murphy’s “The Prom”
Helmed by Ryan Murphy, the ebullient musical dramedy The Prom is bringing some much-needed holiday cheer to our December. Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Rannells play four fading Broadway performers who reach for relevance again by championing a newsworthy cause in small-town Indiana. Queer teen Emma (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman) wants to take her girlfriend Alyssa Greene (Ariana DeBose) to the high school prom,
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle on Filming HBO’s “The Undoing” – Part II
As mentioned in Part I of our interview with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, a good many of The Undoing’s settings were shot on location in Manhattan, while the main interiors were built at Kaufman Astoria Studios in Queens. Many of the locations were found in the Upper West Side, something that took some getting used to for Mantle. “We were very true to the Upper West Side, which I actually found hard to embrace because it’s not a world I’m drawn to,” he says,
“Wonder Woman 1984” IMAX Featurette Puts Focus on Epic Action
Two days ago we shared this big batch of new Wonder Woman 1984 photos that Warner Bros. released. In this haul were a bunch of shots of the Amazon Games, the highly competitive—and incredibly dangerous—triathlon held on Wonder Woman’s mystical home island of Themyscira. Now IMAX has revealed a new featurette that puts the focus on director Patty Jenkins’ commitment to capturing some of the film’s action set pieces, including those Amazon Games sequences,
Alfred Molina Returning as Doctor Octopus in “Spider-Man 3”
If we had to choose the absolute best villain from any Spider-Man movie, it might just have to be Alfred Molina’s portrayal of Doctor Octopus in Sam Raimi’s excellent Spider-Man 2 from 2004. Now The Hollywood Reporter has learned that Molina will be reprising the role—alongside Jamie Foxx’s return as Electro from Marc Webb’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 from 2014—in Jon Watts third film in his Spider-Man trilogy.
Cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle on Filming HBO’s “The Undoing” – Part I
When Nicole Kidman first began reading scripts for HBO’s hugely popular limited series from David E. Kelley, The Undoing, among the first things she noticed was intense scenes in which her very interior character said little, and gives away even less. When she wondered aloud about how best to handle such performances for the camera, director Susanne Bier simply replied, “I’ve got ideas.”
The limited series follows Grace (Kidman) and Jonathan Fraser (Grant),
Ravishing New “Soul” Clip Teases Joe’s Big Moment
There’s no reason to choose between two very different but we’re guessing equally uplifting big releases that are streaming this Christmas Day. On HBO Max you’ve got the long-awaited return of Diana Prince (Gal Gadot) in Wonder Woman 1984. On Disney+, you’ve got what promises to be a moving, gorgeous portrait of a man and his dreams—and what happens when those dreams are deferred—in Pixar’s Soul. In a new clip,
