TIFF 2018: Legendary Composer Hans Zimmer on Scoring Steve McQueen’s Sensational Widows
Hans Zimmer’s minimalist, intimate score for Widows gets under your skin. The legendary composer creates a sonic environment that feels as pressurized and cloistered as the predicament of our four heroines. When you see Steve McQueen’s brilliant crime drama, you’ll notice a persistent humming throughout. As the stakes rise for the three women at the center of the story (the widows of three dead criminals who now must pull off a monumentally dangerous heist to pay off their debts and forge a path of their own),...
TIFF 2018: Compassion Transcends a Harrowing True Story in Hotel Mumbai
Hotel Mumbai is searing. It is a full two hours of terror that seems nearly unbearable at times. Just recalling it, I find myself shifting in my seat, made anxious by the memory. It is the type of film that needs no 3D or virtual reality technology to immerse you fully. There is no way to transfer trauma, but this film is the closest I could imagine you can get to understanding the pain of these victims.
Hotel Mumbai recounts the events of the horrifying attacks on Mumbai in 2008...
Jordan Peele in Talks to Bring Back the Candyman
Hellraiser might be the film that comes to mind most quickly when you hear the name Clive Barker, but Candyman is an even juicier slice of Barker’s works. The horror legend began both ideas as short stories with Candyman being adapted into a 1992 film starring Tony Todd. If you’re unfamiliar with the 90s trilogy, the story is gruesomely scary. It also has a socio-political narrative that begs to be explored and Jordan Peele may just be the man to do it...
Here’s Photographic Proof that Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye Will be in Avengers 4
We all had a lot of fun in the lead-up to Avengers: Infinity War regarding Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye. It became reasonably evident about mid-way through the promotional period that Hawkeye was not going to be in the Russo Brothers franchise-tilting epic. Once Hawkeye didn’t appear in any of the teasers or trailers, an entire cottage industry of “where’s Hawkeye?” faux outrage was born. It was fun. The artist Boss Logic got involved, we got involved,...
TIFF 2018: Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s A Star is Born Shimmers & Soars
We’ve seen a lot of really good films at the Toronto International Film Festival thus far, including the Halloween‘s return to terrifying form and Jason Reitman’s political drama The Front Runner. David Mackenzie’s bloody, muddy epic Outlaw King gave us Chris Pine as the 14th-century Scottish nobleman and rebel Robert the Bruce, and Shane Black delivered a funny, vicious buddies-versus-aliens romp in The Predator. ...
TIFF 2018: The Front Runner Depicts a Politician who Pays for his Infidelities
Pity the politician whose purity of purpose is undone by a puerile media (and pardon the journalist’s alliteration). This seems to be the overarching belief of 1988 presidential candidate Gary Hart (an excellent Hugh Jackman) in Jason Reitman‘s The Front Runner. Hart had the misfortune of running for the highest office in the land just as the media landscape was changing forever. He’d been in politics nearly two decades by then, as both a successful senator and as the campaign manager of George McGovern’s 1972 presidential campaign...
TIFF 2018: Halloween Really is That Good
I have never belonged to the camp that believes something you truly love can be tarnished in the slightest by adding to it. Don’t like an adaptation of your favorite novel? Enjoy the book. Hate the film version of your favorite Broadway musical? No need to rip up the playbill. Loathe the sequel to your favorite film? Enjoy the original. In short, love what you love and ignore the rest.
And yet, I shuddered a little when I first heard a new Halloween was in the works...
TIFF 2018: David Mackenzie’s Bloody Epic Outlaw King
Muddy, bloody and massive in scope and scale, David Mackenzie’s Outlaw King might be Netflix’s most ambitious, sprawling release to date. The historical epic stars Chris Pine as the Robert the Bruce, the 14th-century Scottish noble whose legitimate claim to the throne was contested by fellow Scot Lord John Comyn (Callan Mulvey) and ultimately nullified by the English King Edward I (Game of Thrones’ Stephen Dillane). The story begins with Robert,...
Piecing Together the Captain Marvel Details that Will Affect the MCU
It has been long foreshadowed that Captain Marvel will be the future of the MCU. She is possibly the most powerful character, which will likely be tested in a showdown with Thanos in Avengers 4. But before that can occur, we need a proper introduction to the Starforce member.
In the Avengers: Infinity War post-credits scene, Nick Fury sends out a signal to humanity’s only hope, who appeared to be Captain Marvel. The two apparently have a history with a new image showing a much younger Fury (Samuel L...
How Fight Trainer Don Lee got Jennifer Garner Back in Action for Peppermint
Seventeen years after her star-making turn as Sydney Bristow in Alias, Jennifer Garner is back in action and back in action shape for the new movie Peppermint.
In the new movie (out today), Garner engages in hand-to-hand combat, knife fights, gunfights, and even a little boxing. She did the majority of her own stunts.
“She is heavily involved in her fight scenes. The majority of things she could do she does,” said Don Lee,...
TIFF 2018: The Predator Premiere Heats Up Midnight Madness
The Predator kicked off TIFF’s Midnight Madness series to a rowdy crowd last night. The production filmed in Vancouver and premiered to a welcoming Canadian audience. Many of the fans were willing to come alone to one of the festival’s farthest flung theaters to experience what Shane Black had cooked up. We were rewarded for it with some of the smartest laughs of a modern action film and outrageously gruesome new conflict. Even if we didn’t know any of our seatmates,...
TIFF 2018: DP Pepe Avila del Pino on Bending Genres in The Kindergarten Teacher
Director of photography Pepe Avila del Pino lensed Sara Colangelo‘s daring The Kindergarten Teacher (Netflix, premiering on October 10, 2018), starring Maggie Gyllenhaal about the unusually intense bond Gyllenhaal’s kindergarten teacher Lisa Spinelli forms with a student, Jimmy Roy (Parker Sevak) she’s sure is a child prodigy. Written by Colangelo and based on a script by Nadav Lapid, an Israeli writer/director whose 2014 feature of the same name inspired the film, Avila del Pino had the tough task of taking a film that slipped fluidly between several genres and crafting a moving,...
Who is Truly Featured in this Suspiria Poster?
If the eyes are the window to the soul, do these eyes reveal the soul of Lutz Ebersdorf or Tilda Swinton? Suspiria has released a character poster of Ebersdorf, a novice actor, as Dr. Jozef Klemperer. Yet, why is his initial foray into filmmaking so mysterious? The poster is actually an incredible image and is interesting in itself. However, the unknown actor is rumored to be Tilda Swinton in prosthetics.
The Doctor Strange actress is credited in the film as Madame Blanc,...
The Incredible De-Aging of Samuel L. Jackson in Captain Marvel
Yesterday we shared the first batch of Captain Marvel photos (courtesy of Entertainment Weekly), which offered our first look at Brie Larson and her co-stars in the highly anticipated upcoming film. The film is set in the 90s and tells an origin story (of sorts) of how Larson’s Carol Danvers became Captain Marvel, arguably the most powerful superhero in the Marvel universe. Because of Captain Marvel‘s 90s setting,...
The AHS: Apocalypse Trailer is a Greatest Hits Bonanza
The first trailer for American Horror Story: Apocalypse is completely batty. Familiar characters may have returned, but the suffocating angst of Murder House and glamorous sophistication of Coven have given way to the outrageous. Some of the most fun personas from the series return in a wild mashup mixed with a wild new storyline.
“No need for the rules anymore. The chaos has won,” the trailer declares...
Fierce Women Highlight Fall Movie Schedule
In the post-Wonder Woman era, warriors like Black Panther‘s Okoye (Danai Gurira) make mincemeat of evil-doers with the swing of a spear. This fall at the movies, plenty more fierce female characters are taking matters into their own hands as they fight for justice, power, respect or all of the above. Historical perspective comes courtesy of Mary Queen of Scots (Dec. 7) featuring Saoirse Ronan as the 20-year old monarch who commands an army of thousands in her attempt to take over England...
Captain Marvel Takes Over EW with the First Photos from the Film
Captain Marvel has been one of the most mysterious Marvel films yet in the MCU. The upcoming film, a first for Marvel that features a female superhero in the lead role, has been shrouded in secrecy. It’s been a long wait, more than a decade, for the reveal of the most powerful superhero in the MCU. Finally, a small sliver of the veil has been lifted today with the first exclusive photos of the film from EW...
Laurie and Michael Come Face to Terrifying Face in New Halloween Trailer
Laurie Strode (Jamie Lee Curtis) is a force of nature. Forty years after her first encounter with the Shape, she has evolved from an unsuspecting target of his bloodlust to a confident protector. The new Halloween trailer reveals how the game has changed since the last time Laurie and Michael (James Jude Courtney) met. Almost all of this footage is new and it’s all unequivocally awesome.
There is a major power shift here through the camera movement alone...
Thom Yorke’s Suspiria Title Track is a Haunting Dance
Thom Yorke’s first single from the Suspiria album is a hypnotic gem. Following the film’s premiere at Venice Film Festival this weekend, the Radiohead singer/songwriter released a song from the original soundtrack. The song is titled ‘Suspirium’ and is presumably the title track.
The music is soft, haunting, and infectious. Made for Luca Guadagnino’s dance studio horror remake, the rolling piano line demands movement. Even this least flexible among us will be compelled to find a quiet space to break into interpretive dance...
Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda Highlight New Mary Poppins Returns Images
There are many reasons to be enthused about Disney’s new musical Mary Poppins Returns. We’ll give you two; Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda. Mary Poppins Returns is a sequel to the 1964 classic, with Rob Marshall directing the two superstars. (Check out the trailer here.) Blunt, naturally, stars as the mysterious Mary Poppins, a woman with more than a little magic to spread around who is back to help a new generation of the Banks family find their zest for life...
