Warner Bros. Eyeing The Matrix Reboot
Here’s the pitch: your life and indeed the entire world around you is a simulation. All of the bad, awful stuff (and the good, even great stuff) that you experience is simulated, while your actual body is encased (entombed, really) in a pod, and your actual life is about nothing more than providing energy to a vast, brutal regime. This, of course, is The Matrix, which became one of the most original films of a generation (and is now often bandied about as having been a possible documentary,...
SXSW 2017: Mark Weber’s Genre-Defying Stunner Flesh and Blood
In his label-defying fourth film as director, actor/writer/director Mark Weber (Green Room, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World) has delivered a subtly powerful shot to the heart with Flesh and Blood. Calling the film “reality cinema,” Weber has turned the camera on his mother, Cheri Honkala, his half-brother Guillermo Santos, and himself, turning his unconventional upbringing and tight-knit, highly atypical family into a moving portrait of a uniquely American story. In fact, the only person in the film who doesn’t play a version of themselves is Weber’s real-life partner,...
SXSW 2017: Karen Skloss on her Mind-Bending Prom Thriller The Honor Farm
Prom. For some kids, it’s the night of their young lives. For most everybody else, it’s kind of a let down, a bunch of hype for what turns out to be a fairly forgettable dance, rented tuxedos and dresses you’ll never wear again, and the realization that riding around in the back of a limo can be a nauseous affair. For the characters in writer/director Karen Skloss’s The Honor Farm, however, prom is the beginning to a trippy,...
Fans Rejoice Over Doctor Who Season 10 Trailer
For Doctor Who fans, the trailer for season 10’s premiere is like manna from outer space. One of the most popular sci-fi shows ever created, with more than 53 years of Doctor Who absurdity and delight, Doctor Who is beloved by generations of fans. For the new season, BBC teases the new villains and the far-out adventures awaiting the good doctor, played by the beloved Peter Capaldi, who reprises his role and is joined by a host of new companions...
The Odds are Rough in new Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 TV Spot
We’ve got some fresh footage from Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. Walt Disney Pictures and Marvel Studios have released a new TV spot.
The new spot looks at the tough odds always up against our Guardians, and, with the trouble some folks are having (cough Nebula cough) with the team’s name in the first place. The humor’s there, per usual, and once again Drax (Dave Bautista) steals snippet of a scene we see him in...
Chatting With Beauty and the Beast Director Bill Condon
Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, which opens this week, is a many-splendored thing. The studio’s latest supersized live-action 3-D rendering of an animated classic is a digitally gilded feast for the eyes. It’s also a family blockbuster that provides Emma Watson with her best acting showcase since the Harry Potter franchise. And this brand-name fairy tale about a romance that blossoms between spirited bibliophile Belle and a rage-filled prince turned into a hulking creature by a curse is poised to become a box-office record breaker if pre-sales and trailer views are any indication...
SXSW 2017: Charlize Theron Goes Off in Atomic Blonde
Stunt coordinator and John Wick director David Leitch might have found an even more perfect vessel for his hyperstylized, ingenuously crafted action films than Keanu Reeves in Atomic Blonde’s ferocious Charlize Theron. Having already proven her mettle as a credibly kick-ass heroine in George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, Theron cements her status as the current era’s greatest female action star, a status once enjoyed by Angelina Jolie,...
SXSW 2017: Bill Pullman Takes Charge in The Ballad of Lefty Brown
Bill Pullman (Independence Day) thrilled SXSW fans as the title character of The Ballad of Lefty Brown. Director Jared Moshe’s full fledged western adventure was tender, complex and beautifully shot. Lefty is (ironically) the right hand man to the seasoned and confident Senator Johnson (Peter Fonda.) Johnson is the old school John Wayne-esque hero you would expect to take the lead. However, when Lefty becomes the only witness to the Senator’s assassination,...
SXSW 2017: Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver Delivers
Edgar Wright's Baby Driver opens with one of the best action set pieces in years. Baby (The Fault in our Stars' Ansel Elgort) sits behind the wheel of a super powered Subaru. We stay with Baby as he listens to Jon Spencer Blues Explosion’s “Bellbottoms,” while inside the bank only a few feet away, the crew of bank robbers he’s driving getaway for are doing their work. When they come bursting out of the bank and hustling back into the car,...
Wonder Woman‘s Official Trailer Packs a Mean Punch
Warner Bros. released our first glimpse of baby Wonder Woman and she’s an adorable, pint sized badass. As she is taught the ways of her Amazon culture, baby Diana is told that she’ll never be great, but her smirk reveals she won’t listen to the naysayers. The trailer shows an intense all female battle training that culminates in her first super display of power. Director Patty Jenkins’ and star Gal Gadot are delivering the first major film to feature Wonder Woman,...
SXSW 2017: Sam Elliott Shines in The Hero
Last night we caught The Hero, and couldn’t help but feel that the film’s star could be a patron saint to the festival. Even though Sam Elliott was born in California, the lanky, golden-voiced icon oozes the kind of subtle, thoughtful masculinity that seems in short supply these days. And The Hero was written for specifically for him. You can feel the respect that the filmmakers and his fellow costars have for him throughout the movie...
SXSW 2017: Terrence Malick’s Song to Song
Much has been made about writer/director Terrence Malick’s two-decade break from filmmaking. Those years were largely spent in Austin, where his latest stunner, Song to Song, is set. There is no one quite like Malick, from his very first film, Badlands, starring Sissy Spacek and Martin Sheen as two young killers on the run, Malick took a story that we’d heard before (a road trip movie with killers—think Bonnie and Clyde),...
Michael Fassbender’s Robot Takes Center Stage in New Alien: Covenant Featurette
Ridley Scott’s Prometheus had several things going for it (most crucially, the director’s return to one of his signature franchises), and one of those Michael Fassbender’s robot David. Brilliant, cunning, and programmed for treachery, David was arguably the prime mover in Prometheus, and only one of two characters still standing (sort of) at the film’s end. The last we saw of him, Noomi Rapace’s Elizabeth Shaw was sipping his severed head (still talking) into a duffel bag as the two take off to find the Engineer’s home planet...
SXSW 2017: 5 Narrative Features We’re Excited About
We’re once again down in Austin for South by Southwest, bringing you news, interviews and reactions. SXSW is arguably the most film geek friendly of all the major fests, giving everyone from auteur-loving AFI grads to horror fans (and everyone in between) something to enjoy. In fact, most of the folks who flock to Austin are polyamorous when it comes to their film tastes, and SXSW’s programming has always been open to high brow, low brow, and chainsaw-in-the-brow—their midnight horror movies are some of the bloody best...
Game of Thrones Tortures Fans With Teaser, Reveals Premiere Date
Game of Thrones has built up so much good will among its millions of fans, it can ask them to watch a giant block of ice melt. That’s the premise behind their latest, torturous publicity stunt regarding the release of the show’s penultimate 7th season, a hilarious and effective bit of psy-op marketing. A staggering 1.5 million people watched the ice melt on Facebook Live, typing “FIRE” into the comments section in order to make the flames rise and melt the ice block quicker. ...
Celebrating Reel Women: Directors
From gripping films like The Hurt Locker and Selma to groundbreaking documentaries like 13th and Blackfish, to horror films like XX and The Invitation (their contribution to the genre is staggering), women in film are consistently leading the industry in new and refreshing directions.
Female directors are responsible for bringing some of film's most iconic moments from script to screen...
Love Actually 2 is Happening—Sort of
We’ve finally gotten what we’ve been asking for after all these years! Director Richard Curtis is reuniting the majority of the Love Actually cast for a short film titled Red Nose Day Actually. As the title suggests, it is made in honor of Red Nose Day, an event started by charitable initiative Comic Relief, which was co-founded by Richard Curtis.
In the short, we will be catching up with one of our favorite film ensembles...
Cutting-Edge Technology Lets Planet Earth II Shoot in the Dark
The BBC’s Planet Earth series has captivated audiences worldwide, stunning viewers with incredible high-quality nature footage. The filmmakers were able to create groundbreaking episodes, showing tidbits of life in the wild we have never been exposed to before. Its sequel, Planet Earth II, has surpassed all expectations. Somehow, they managed to shoot even more dynamic and intimate shots, making most of us wonder: how did they do that?
Many wildlife filmmakers are confronted with the great challenge of figuring out how to capture mesmerizing realistic footage while minimizing your influence on the animals and your surroundings...
Game of Thrones Season 7 Poster Teases Battle Between Fire vs. Ice
We’ve been waiting patiently for Game of Thrones news for a while now. The last time we checked in on our Lannisters and Starks, we were writing about their big haul at the Creative Arts Emmys, where the show was the night’s big winner with 9 awards. Since then, there have been a few tidbits here and there, but all’s been quiet on the Westeros front. It’s as if our actual lives here in the real world has become GoT like,...
Zack Snyder Teases Aquaman Footage From Justice League
In cased you missed it, a week ago director Zack Snyder teased some footage of Aquaman (Jason Momoa) from Justice League, as a little reverse birthday gift he delivered to fans. The shot is brief but beautiful, showing the superhero in his natural element. In just five seconds, we watch Aquaman swim up to a man on a throne, which most people speculate is Willem Dafoe’s Nuidis Vulko. Aquaman’s movements are impressively graceful and fish-like,...
