Lifelong friends Adam (Ashton Kutcher) and Emma (Natalie Portman) attempt to avoid falling in love after falling into each other's beds in this comedy exploring the complexities and quirks of having friends with benefits. Adam was a typical, hormonal 14-year-old when he first came on to Emma at summer camp -- and got shot down in flames.
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In the years that followed, however, Adam and Emma continued to cross paths until, eventually, they both caved to their animal instincts. Despite an intense session of earth-shaking sex, however, Emma makes it clear to Adam that the last thing she wants is a committed relationship. And thanks to the fact that Adam's father (Kevin Kline), a fallen television star, has just begun dating his son's ex-girlfriend, the horrified bachelor has developed an aversion to monogamy as well. At first their casual stance on sex works great for both; Emma can focus on her career instead of allowing her emotions to dictate her decisions, and Adam can play the field without fear of hurting her feelings. Over time, though, a funny thing happens -- Adam begins to develop feelings for Emma that he never had for any of his countless conquests. Before they both know it, love has reared its ugly head and they've gotten too emotionally involved to cut the relationship off cold.
Two best friends sabotage each other's weddings when they find out that both are booked on the same date and at the same venue. Emma and Liv are childhood best friends who have always dreamed of their ideal wedding: June at The Plaza hotel. When both get engaged, the two butt heads when their weddings are booked on the same date and place.
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Soon the claws start to come out as each one tries to make each other's life miserable by meddling with each other's wedding plans such as sabotaging one's wedding dress, hair styling, pre-wedding diet, spray tan, among other things.
Emma being the passive one of the two starts to assert herself, which puts a strain on her relationship with her fiance who is not used to this meaner Emma. At the wedding, Liv has planted a wild video of Emma for the ceremony which puts Emma over the edge, sending her flying into Liv's ceremony for an all out girl fight. After letting out their rage, they come to their senses and make-up. Emma calls off her wedding, while Liv pushes through with hers. Emma pairs up with Liv's brother Nate. Years later, the two best friends reunite, Emma also married, and both pregnant with the same due date.
The movie starts off with Andrew Paxton (Ryan Reynolds) snoozing his alarm clock, and jumping out of bed realizing that he’s overslept and could be late for work. He rushes out and gets to the office in the nick of time. Just as he gets to his desk, Margaret Tate (Sandra Bullock) walks into the office. Everyone either stutters or looks away as she coldly, hurriedly walks past them and directly into her office. Margaret is a book editor for a big NYC Publishing company and Andrew is her assistant/secretary.
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Margaret fires an editor named Bob Spaulding, who tries to embarrass her by yelling at her in front of the entire office. She takes the abuse then threatens to have security escort him out if he doesn’t leave immediately. Once he’s gone, she tells Andrew that she’s gonna need him this weekend causing him to break plans to attend his grandmother’s 90th birthday party. His father berates him over the phone and urges him to quit. When he senses Margaret coming towards him, he makes it seem like he’s speaking with a writer, but she’s onto him and asks if his family told him to quit. He replies, “Everyday.”
Later, she’s called into the office of her bosses who tell her that because she left the country to woo a new writer a few months before, she voided her visa and will be deported shortly. This would mean that she would lose her job, which would be given to the only other editor in the building – Bob, who she just fired. At that moment, Andrew interrupts with a phone call from a writer, Margaret tells him to take a message, so he asks if he should say she is otherwise “engaged?” Margaret’s eyes light with an idea. She calls Andrew into the office and announces to her bosses that she and Andrew are getting married. He tries to deny it, but she convinces them otherwise.
After they leave the office, she blackmails Andrew to keep the ruse until she gains her citizenship. He reluctantly agrees and heads over to Immigration with her. At the office, they meet Mr. Gilbertson, who immediately recognizes their situation, and tries to intimidate them into confessing. Andrew seems like he’s going to crack, but decides against it and inturn blackmails her into promoting him. They tell him that they are going to announce their engagement at his grandmother’s party this weekend…in Alaska.
Tom is a hopeless romantic who falls for a girl who doesn't believe in love. Tom Hansen tells the story of his relationship with Summer Finn. He narrates it from the perspective of the present, looking back at certain events in a non-chronological order.
At the beginning of their relationship, Tom is a hopeless romantic working at a greeting card company. He falls hard for a new employee named Summer after a brief conversation in an elevator, and believe it to be love at first sight.
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He tries to work up the nerve to ask her out but fails until an office outing where they both sing karaoke and end up chatting about love. Summer reveals that she doesn't believe in it. Over the next few weeks spend more time together, going on outings and even shopping at Ikea. Summer repeats that she doesn't want anything serious and Tom agrees but is obviously crazy about her.
One day while they're in a bar Tom gets into a fight with a guy that hits on Summer, leading to a huge argument between Summer and Tom about what their relationship really is. After this their relationship winds down over the next few weeks and eventually Summer ends things.
Tom is brokenhearted and feels betrayed by Summer. His job suffers and he's transferred to the Condolences section as he becomes more depressed. He re-evaluates his beliefs on love and destiny and comes around to the point of view that Summer was right all along, love is not real.
He visits with his sister, who tries to give him some perspective and help him out of his funk. He tries to see the good side of the time with Summer, and begins to look for architectural jobs (his original passion) with little success.
The movie starts with Jane (Meryl Streep) and Jake (Alec Baldwin) at the anniversary party of a couple. You see the four laughing together and Jane and Jake smiling, and they seem to be at ease with each other. Everyone is of similar age and elegantly and tastefully dressed, and then Jake’s much younger wife Agness (Lake Bell) shows up wearing a bikini top and a sarong skirt.
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They chat for a few minutes and Agness brings up the plans for Luke’s, Jake and Jane’s son, graduation in New York the following week. They realize they are all staying at the same hotel. Jane excuses herself from the party and drives to her beautiful home. We see that she has a loving, close relationship with her two adult daughters, Gabby and Lauren, as well as Lauren’s fiancée Harley (John Krasinski). She also has a close-knit, group of friends who go over to her house for dinner and drinks, to hang out, gossip and have a good time. They discuss Jane’s amicable relationship with Jake and how much she has progressed from hating him 10 years ago to peacefully co-existing with him. They discuss how Jake cheated on Jane during their marriage with Agness, eventually leaving Jane to be with Agness. However, then Agness left Jake for a former boyfriend, got pregnant by him and returned to Jake. Consequently, Jake is now raising Agness’ young son with a former lover, Pedro. Later, Jane goes to work, she owns and runs a bakery/café.
She also realizes that she had forgotten about an appointment with her architect as she’s planning to remodel her kitchen and add an expansion to her home. Her architect brings along another architect, Adam (Steve Martin), and as they go over the plans, which Jane loves, he reveals that Adam is the one who has designed her new plans. Jane is very involved in the process, sending numerous emails concerned with minute details and has even more comments and details she wants altered. She and Adam make another appointment for Adam to come over to the house to see it in person and discuss the plans.
Jane sneaks away, telling her employees she’s going to a dentist appointment when she really goes to see a plastic surgeon. She expresses her reservations about plastic surgery but admits some concern over her drooping eyelids. The doctor details cosmetic procedures, which sound pretty grotesque and she quickly leaves. In the elevator, she runs into Jake, Agness and Pedro coming out of a fertility clinic. She offers her dentist excuse again, and Jake questions her, knowing she’s been going to the same dentist for years, further illustrating their closeness and history. We see that Pedro is hyperactive and constantly climbing all over Jake, further illustrating the age differences in his new family.
In Boston, Anna (Amy Adams) is shown decorating luxury apartments. She is a “stager” by profession: she puts furniture and accessories in empty apartments and houses, in order to make them look their best to sell. She meets her boyfriend, Jeremy (Adam Scott), a cardiologist, and together they go before the board of The Davenport, an exclusive co-op where they hope to be approved, and buy a condo.
Afterwards, she meets a friend for dress shopping, and while being fitted, her friend says she saw Jeremy coming out of a posh jewelry store, carrying a small signature red bag. They scream in excitement: this store is known for their engagement rings. Anna practices looking surprised, as they have a reservation for a fancy dinner out, since Jeremy is about to leave for a medical conference in Dublin.
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Before dinner, she meets her Dad (John Lithgow), for a drink and a visit in a Red-Sox bar. He is unkempt, and appears to be less than successful, but quite happy. He tells her that her grandmother proposed to her grandfather on Leap Day, and they were married and quite happy. He explains that on Leap Day, February 29th, a girl can propose to her guy in Dublin, and it’s a tradition. She laughs and says it is a silly custom.
At dinner, Jeremy pulls out a small box, and tells her to open it-she does, and is surprised to find it holds diamond earrings, and not an engagement ring. She smiles wanly and feigns enthusiasm. She is disappointed that it isn’t an engagement ring and proposal, after living together for 4 years.
After Jeremy leaves for his flight to Dublin, Anna looks on the internet for the Leap Day tradition, and finds out it really happens, and reads articles and watches video clips of proposals. She decides to do it, packs a bag, and books a flight to Dublin. She is seated next to a priest, and tells him her plans. As they near Ireland, they hit a bad storm, and must divert to Cardiff, Wales to land. Upon landing, Anna is amazed she cannot get any flights to Dublin, even after they tell her all the airports are closed. She takes a bus, and then a small tugboat to Cork, Ireland…but again, the storm messes her plans and she is taken and dropped on the beach in Dingle, Ireland. Anna takes her rolling Louis Vuitton suitcase, and starts walking. It begins to rain, and she is soaked. Eventually she finds a small village, and goes in the pub.
A young man with the ability to time travel discovers that finding true love isn't as easy as he thought it would be in this romantic comedy from writer/director Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Pirate Radio). Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) is 21 and lonely.
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In the harsh morning light following a depressing New Year's Eve party, however, he discovers a family secret that will change his life forever. Entrusted by his father (Bill Nighy) with the knowledge that the men in their family can time travel, Cornwall native Tim relocates to London to study law, and find a girlfriend. The moment Tim locks eyes with gorgeous Mary (Rachel McAdams) he knows he's found the woman of his dreams. But as soon as they've fallen in love, an unexpected glitch in the time travel renders them complete strangers again. Now, in order to win back Mary's heart, Tim will have to travel into the past time and again. Eventually, he seems to master the process, using his unique talent to create an unforgettable marriage proposal, ensure his wedding to Mary goes off without a hitch, and circumvent a massive traffic jam that blocks their route to the hospital when his wife goes into labor, but in time Tim discovers that the true key to happiness lies not in his ability to fix the problems of the past, but instead make the absolute most of his life in the present. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
This sequel to the faith-based hit is a torturous exercise in one-note proselytizing.
The Almighty is still alive, albeit also under continuing attack, in “God’s Not Dead 2,” a sequel in which the issue of religion in schools leads to a courtroom showdown over God’s rightful place in society. Boasting a superficially new plot but preaching the exact same sermon – in the identical leaden, graceless manner – as its predecessor, Harold Cronk’s follow-up concocts a laughable crisis of faith whose resolution is a fait accompli, turning the endeavor into a torturous exercise in one-note proselytizing. The franchise’s disciples will surely fill its collection plate as full as 2014’s $60-million-grossing original, but this paranoid persecution-complex fantasy is unlikely to win many converts.
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Cronk’s original installment presented Kevin Sorbo’s atheistic liberal-arts professor as the embodiment of satanic evil. Since he literally died for his sins at the end of that story – only after making a deathbed conversion to Christ, however! – the filmmaker’s latest turns to another anti-conservative archetype for its bad guy: an ACLU lawyer, here embodied by Ray Wise as a disbelieving shark who “hates” Christians’ beliefs, and who wants to use his newest case to “prove, once and for all, that God is dead!”
Visually demarcated by his swanky shoes, designer suit and borderline-maniacal eyes, Wise’s Pete Kane is presented as a veritable demon fit for a David Lynch film. “God’s Not Dead 2,” though, doesn’t mean him to be a caricature, but rather a realistic emblem of the “vicious” forces that – as Pastor Dave (David A.R. White) tells a group of ministers led by Fred Dalton Thompson – are waging a genuine “war” against Christians. The notion that Christians are an oppressed minority beset on all sides by secular “rationalist” forces (including the government, which wants Pastor Dave to hand over his sermons) is bluntly articulated throughout. And the effect of such talk is to situate the action in a fictional world that seems at once recognizable – it is, for example, populated by humans who can speak, eat and weep – and yet so topsy-turvy as to be the stuff of science-fiction.
For several years, little Annabel Beam suffered from a rare, incurable, and life-threatening digestive disorder. She'd been in and out of the hospital numerous times, poked and prodded by many doctors, and had invasive tests run. She was on a regimen of several different drugs that still just barely kept her symptoms controlled, and even then, she experienced frequent flare-ups. Just before Christmas, on one of their many trips to Boston to see a renowned specialist, Annabel once again found herself admitted to the hospital. While there, her mother Christy could tell that she wasn't her usual self.
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Annabel had always held up well in her battle with the disease, but this time, she was very emotionally drained. In a quiet moment, Annabel told Christy, "Mommy, I just want to go to heaven with Jesus where there is no pain." Heartbroken for her daughter, Christy didn't know what to do except lean on her lifelong faith.
Two weeks later, back at home in Texas, Annabel had a rare day where she felt up to playing outdoors with her sisters. They climbed a huge Cottonwood tree on their rural property, but the large branch they always pretended was a bridge started to crack. In an effort to get off the branch quickly Annabel's older sister, ordered her to climb inside a big hole in the side of the tree, thinking it was just a depression. Little did either of them know, the tree was completely hollow inside. Annabel plunged head-first thirty feet to the bottom and was trapped inside. While first her dad, and then rescue crews, worked feverishly for hours to get her out, Annabel had a life-altering experience. She says that she went to heaven, where she met Jesus and sat on his lap. He told her it wasn't her time and that she needed to go back, because he had plans for her and that she would be completely OK. When Annabel finally awakened inside her wooden prison, she also says a guardian angel watched over her until the rescue workers were finally able to free her. Not only did she come out of that experience virtually unscathed, but over the following weeks and months, she also was miraculously healed of her disease. Miracles from Heaven is the inspiring story of her incredible journey back to wholeness
Written and directed by Jamal Hill, this movie is about a family of siblings in Philadelphia who get caught in the middle of a street-gang war. It focuses on a particular neighborhood and the divisions therein, as well as a murder mystery that agitates the divisions and further divides. Ultimately, the film becomes a riff of 1990's movies about inner-city, black youth like Boyz N The Hood (1991) or Juice (1992).
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Keke Palmer stars as Jackie Taylor, the youngest of three siblings living in the Overbrook neighborhood in West Philadelphia. She's a cheerleader, but she spends a lot of time in the library reading all kinds of intelligent and intellectual books. She's not that different from Palmer's character in Akeelah and the Bee, except her pursuits here aren't strictly educational. Jackie is an aspiring singer, so she's also a mix of Palmer's character in Joyful Noise.
Cory Hardrict co-stars as June Taylor, the eldest of the three siblings. In lieu of his father not being in the picture, June is the father-figure to his brother and sister. He also does a lot to take care of his mother, played by Macy Gray (Training Day and Shadowboxer). The way he does take care of everyone is possibly through illegal means. June appears to be the leader of one of the two street-gangs.
Eric D. Hill Jr. (Hurricane Season and Orange is the New Black) also co-stars as Sergio Taylor, the middle child of the three siblings. He's also the tallest, as he is an aspiring basketball player who wants to go to the NBA. One of his friends name-checks the paraellel to Hoop Dreams (1994). He hopes to use basketball to get out of poverty and his difficult circumstances.
Sergio's friends are ultimately good people, but they threaten to pull Sergio into trouble through petty crime. His closest friend is Sean, played by Romeo Miller. Miller is a rapper, male model and basketball player on his own right. Sergio's other friend is Dez, played by Justin Martin, but it's Sean who gets more screen time and who is the more funny and charismatic.
Quincy Brown (We the Party) plays Chris Collins, the love interest for Jackie. From the moment he appears on screen, he's supposed to be the perfect guy. Chris is the son of a music producer who seduces Jackie with his knowledge of the books she's reading as well as with promises to push her hopes as a singer. Brown is the son of Kim Porter and Sean Combs, so his casting is almost art imitating life. Brown is also the biological son of R&B singer Al B. Sure!, so obviously he's gorgeous and absolute eye-candy. Yet, he's almost too good to be true.
Rock star aid workers whip round a war zone in Spanish director Fernando Leon de Aranoa’s well-meant, but wobbly, tonal mishmash about the tragi-comic bureaucracy of post-conflict.
It’s 1995 “somewhere in the Balkans”. A large dead man has been dropped down a well, “Fatso” has stuck there some 12 hours and he’s spoiling the water supply. Rogueish Mambrú (Benicio del Toro) heads a team of humanitarians tasked with scooping out the corpse and restoring clean water. They have no rope, little time and plenty of bureaucracy to deal with. What should be a simple job bloats into farce. Mambrú and crew are thrown into an odyssey, beset with stony-faced locals, gun-toting tweens and those boneheads at the UN. The war is over, but the fight against inertia has only just begun. Trailer:
Like Michel Hazanavicius’s The Search before it, A Perfect Day is a tribute to the tenacity of men and women who risk their safety to spend their time feeling frustrated and useless. Like M*A*S*H it makes sport of the neutered dreams of those who sign up to help and find themselves blocked by protocol. But De Aronoa doesn’t have Altman’s poise and he struggles to straddle comedy and tragedy. The lurches in tone are brutal, accompanied by crass soundtrack choices that emphasise the jolt. In the aftermath of the team finding a body swinging from a tree in the back garden of a bombed-out house, de Aronoa cranks out Marilyn Manson’s cover of Sweet Dreams Are Made of This. It turns the heat up way too high. The drama is so over-cooked it bubbles out of the pot.
The dynamic between the team members is a little more elegant. Del Toro and Tim Robbins (playing a wily tomcat lifer called B) have fun with the sparkier bits of dialogue, even if their rapport crushes any hope of co-stars Olga Kurylenko and Mélanie Thierry making a dent. Kurylenko’s character, an ex- of Mambrú’s who’s auditing the team, is a nag; Thierry is is a wimp. Neither are allowed to do much that challenges the assumed dominance of the older, gnarlier men. “Nobody wears black panties to a war zone,” growls B appreciatively as Kurylenko’s character is forced to pee in public. For someone so effortlessly heroic, he comes off as a bit of an arse.
Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Aaron Paul, Diane Kruger and Jane Fonda flesh out Gabriele Muccino’s New York-set melodrama.
If Italian director Gabriele Muccino has managed to make four American features with major Hollywood stars, he must be doing something right. After his dreary sports rom-com Playing for Keeps, one had to wonder what it was, but Fathers & Daughters puts him back on the family-friendly, melodramatic track. Bringing good old-fashioned Mediterranean emotion to a screenplay that feels oh so familiar, this modern-day weepie unapologetically plays to the crowd rather than the critics. A notable cast featuring Russell Crowe, Amanda Seyfried, Aaron Paul, Diane Kruger and Jane Fonda should encourage matinee goers, before bedding down on the small screen.
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Strangely, despite a pile-up of searing tragedies and rank injustices, there are fewer tears in store for viewers than in some of his previous work, which should be the sign of a maturing director. At the same time, there’s more dramatic meat to chew on, around the theme of how childhood influences one's adult life. Amanda Seyfried’s deep-diving portrayal of an emotionally short-circuited young woman springs convincingly from the intercut scenes detailing her relationship with loving dad Russell Crowe when she was eight years old. Pulling out all the stops on flashbacks and flash forwards, Muccino underlines – for those who need it – the connection between youthful traumas and adult dysfunctions. Typical of the director, a strong undercurrent of hope courses through the darkest moments of Brad Desch’s screenplay, leaving room for an easily foreseeable upbeat finale.
The film opens on the car crash that kills Katie’s mother. Dad Jake Davis (Crowe), a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, was driving and got distracted by a heated argument with his wife. He survives the accident with a severe head injury that leaves him subject to violent, epileptic-like seizures, which come on at all the wrong moments. Little Katie, played with joyful maturity by first-timer Kylie Rodgers, seems unscathed in the back seat. But when Dad surrenders to depression and has to check into a mental hospital for seven months, she is left in Westchester with her evil aunt (Kruger at her icy Teutonic best) and uncle, who are filthy rich. (“I make more money than God!” boasts the latter.) They hatch a plan to adopt Katie, on the grounds that Jake is too poor and unstable to take care of her, not to mention the unpardonable fact that his last book bombed.
With this threat hovering in the background, Jake buys Katie her first bike and enrolls her in an expensive school, writing all night to pay the bills. Just as another down-and-out dad, played by Will Smith in Muccino’s The Pursuit of Happyness, struggled to keep cruel reality from his small son, so Jake pretends nothing is wrong while smothering Katie in fatherly love. Crowe is good in the part – lovingly affectionate, bearishly physical, but also a tad witty when he comes out of his self-imposed isolation and takes a swipe at stiff-backed lawyers, educators and his brother-in-law. His warm relationship to his publisher, played to a T by a relaxed Jane Fonda, is the only positive one outside of his daughter.
A wholly original, enormously entertaining, and deeply heartfelt look at what it means to be human, Swiss Army Man is the feature film debut of acclaimed music video directors Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively known as DANIELS, and responsible for the beloved “Turn Down For What” video, among many others). Bursting with limitless creativity in both form and content, Swiss Army Man goes from the absurd to the emotional to the whimsical to the profound and back again.
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Hank (Paul Dano) is stranded on a deserted island, having given up all hope of ever making it home again. But one day everything changes when a corpse named Manny (Daniel Radcliffe) washes up on shore; the two become fast friends, and ultimately go on an epic adventure that will bring Hank back to the woman of his dreams.
Swiss Army Man creates a world like no other—a place of pure fantastical imagination, brimming with magical realism yet featuring two characters whose dreams and fears are entirely relatable. Dano and Radcliffe both fully commit to their directors’ audacious vision, and their work is exceptional, finding the perfect balance of humor and heart that drives the whole film. A celebration of all the wonders cinema has to offer, Swiss Army Man is ultimately all the more remarkable for using its dazzling originality to tell a universal story of human complexity and connection.
The Dressmaker, Jocelyn Moorhouse’s royally daffy adaptation of a novel by Rosalie Ham, builds itself around such a frivolous conceit you could almost call it brave: it's about Kate Winslet bringing stitchcraft to the 1950s Australian outback. It could have been a transfixing folly if, say, Baz Luhrmann had made it. Instead, it's destined to be a minor trinket in the curiosity box of Winslet's star vehicles – something turned over briefly for inspection, discovered to be paste, and popped back in for a rainy day.
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Winslet is mysterious seamstress Tilly Dunnage, who steps off a blue bus in the opening minutes, plants her Singer sewing machine on the ground, and looks up at the dusty backwater that used to be her hometown. This is the fictional enclave of Dungatar, to which she’s returned after supposedly killing someone in childhood. There are scores to be settled, an amnesiac mother (Judy Davis) to be coaxed into lucidity, and a rugger-playing stud (Liam Hemsworth) to be stripped down to his boxers and ensnared. But most of all there are frocks. Dozens of them. Every scene’s a catwalk in the scrub, a Dior or Balenciaga-inspired photoshoot amid the tumbleweed. Soon the locals forget Tilly’s possibly-criminal past and bang down her door to get in on that va-va-voom.
The modest feat of managing a soft Aussie accent is well within Kate’s gift. Turning this film into a watchable bit of flannel is quite beyond her. She spends roughly half of it with one hand planted on her hip, the other pointing a lit cigarette imperiously at the sky. While the local lads are playing rugby, she swans up to the pitch like a scarlet empress on heat, and distracts all the players into tumbling all over each other. You hardly blink before she’s in some strapless, low-cut black number, peeling off elbow-length gloves like the conniving heroine in Gilda. The film’s major blunder – it’s got plenty of competition – is mistaking Kate Winslet for Rita Hayworth.
Meanwhile, virtually every working actor in Australia fights for scraps. The ensemble gives us a delightful village idiot called Barney (Gyton Grantley), Kerry Fox as a bitchy matron, Sarah Snook as a bullied wallflower gagging for a makeover.
Ruby Adams (Keenan Kampa) is a dancer from the Midwest on scholarship, living her first day in New York City. Johnny Blackwell (Nicholas Galitzine) is a British musician, playing for money in the subway tunnels. Ruby's world is classical and disciplined; Johnnie's is improvisational and street smart. When a hip-hop battle gone wrong throws these two artists together, they immediately clash but can't deny it when sparks begin to fly.
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Their lives quickly get entangled in the pitfalls that come with competing in New York City. With the help of a dynamic dance crew called The SwitchSteps, Ruby and Johnnie must find a way to save Ruby's scholarship and keep Johnnie from being deported. In an action-packed extravaganza combining cutting edge hip-hop with contemporary and classical dance, the two must navigate their opposing worlds and prepare for a competition where winning or losing will change their lives forever. HIGH STRUNG is elevated by standout supporting performances from veteran actors Jane Seymour, Paul Freeman and Maia Morgenstern and features an original soundtrack of boundary-breaking commercial tracks blending styles of music in a way that already has the dance industry and social media talking. The film's original take on familiar musical genres sets it apart from prior dance franchises: Step Up and Street Dance. It's brought to viewers by Broadway stars Michael and Janeen Damian and top choreographer Dave Scott (Step Up 3D; Stomp the Yard; resident choreographer on So You Think You Can Dance; guest choreographer on Dancing with the Stars) and introduces the breathtakingly talented Keenan Kampa (Russia's Mariinsky Ballet's first American dancer) and Nicholas Galitzine (The Beat Beneath My Feet) alongside 62 of some of the World's most exciting and original dancers from London, Paris, L.A. and New York.
Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart pair off in Woody Allen's beautiful-looking but overly familiar Hollywood love triangle
Going into a new Woody Allen film, there’s always the hope that it’s going to be major, like “Blue Jasmine,” and not one of his trifles, like the Allen movies that have opened the Cannes Film Festival in recent years (“Hollywood Ending,” “Midnight in Paris”). At this point, however, his track record vastly favors the probability that it’s going to be a trifle, at which point the question then becomes: Will it be one of his good ones — that is, one of those Allen fables that really sings? “Café Society,” starring Jesse Eisenberg as a sweetly naïve Bronx nebbish who journeys to Hollywood in the 1930s to seek his fortune, has been made with all the verve and high-style panache and star magnetism of a small-scale Allen gem. Yet the film, watchable as it is, never quite overcomes the sense that it’s a lavish diagram working hard to come off as a real movie. With intermittent romantic sparks struck between Eisenberg and his co-star, a poised and glowing Kristen Stewart, “Café Society” is likely to draw a larger swath of the Allen audience than his last two, “Magic in the Moonlight” and “Irrational Man.” But there may be a limit to its success, since it’s one of those Allen films that keeps talking about passion instead of actually making the audience feel it.
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Eisenberg, looking handsome in wide-pleated pants and a curly pompadour, is the latest in a long line of actors who have been given the obvious directive to channel Allen’s onscreen spirit. But he does a more appealing job of it than most, because the Eisenberg mannerisms – the antic verbal dexterity,Source the slight sputter of people-pleasing insecurity – match up so organically with Allen’s own. Eisenberg plays Bobby Dorfman, who arrives in Hollywood looking to get a job in the office of his uncle, Phil (Steve Carell), a veteran agent so powerful that he can’t turn around at a pool party without being badgered about some deal he’s negotiating for Ginger Rogers or William Powell. We suspect — or maybe hope — that Phil is going to be the oily player who lures Bobby into his world of corrupt glamor, but Carell, looking appealingly fleshy, plays Phil as a busy, babbly Type A mensch who gives his nephew errands to run and finds the time to introduce him to all the right people.
How well do Jane Austen and Whit Stillman get along? That’s the decisive question in Love & Friendship, the American director’s adaptation of an early Austen curio, her long-unpublished epistolary novella Lady Susan. It certainly sounds like a dream fit, since caustic comedies of high-society manners are exactly what Stillman does and always has – there’s even a barbed throwaway exchange about Austen in his debut film, Metropolitan.
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It’s with ticklish glee, then, that you watch Love & Friendship live up to every possible expectation you could set for it, opening out the adulterous games of Austen’s surprisingly risqué text and elaborating on them with impish, often breathlessly funny verve. It’s flat-out hilarious – find me a funnier screen stab at Austen, and I’m tempted to offer your money back personally. Gliding through its compact 92 minutes with alert photography and not a single scene wasted, it’s also Stillman on the form of his life.
Not the least of his film’s coups is handing Kate Beckinsale her best role in, ooh, 20 years, since she played Emma Woodhouse in Andrew Davies’s 1996 Emma on ITV. Let’s face it, Beckinsale’s action-figurine roles in Hollywood have mostly tended to cramp her style. Here she springs back with a deliciously controlled and self-aware performance, playing the Austen title character as a born manipulator so devious she can spin the rest of the ensemble around her little finger.
The story begins with Lady Susan Vernon newly widowed and trying her luck with the inconveniently married Lord Manwaring – the first character to be introduced by caption, as “a divinely attractive man”, but given a walk-on part and, in a typically dry Stillman touch, no lines whatsoever. To grease the wheels of this dangerous liaison, Susan has packed her poor daughter (perfect, sensitive Morfydd Clark) off to a grim-sounding boarding school, but also aims to ingratiate herself with her late husband’s family, catching the eye of a fetching and gullible young in-law called Reginald DeCourcy (Xavier Samuel).
Earlier today I posted the trailer for Evolution, a new horror film from French director Lucile Hadzihalilovic that's shaping up to be one of the most intriguing genre imports of the year. The evocative spot manages to draw us in completely while giving away very little of the plot -- an art that's been all but lost in the business of Hollywood marketing, which regularly advertises films as if they were cars, sacrificing any semblance of mystery as they cover every gleaming inch of the product being peddled.
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Case in point: the "teaser" for The Bye Bye Man, a new horror film that looks sort of like A Nightmare on Elm Street meets Final Destination meets Sinister, with all the genre box-checking that description implies. I'm all for "original" ideas in horror, but this one doesn't inspire much hope thanks to a subtlety-free first look that should just call itself what it is: a trailer. For an action movie. (Side-bar: Why is nearly every studio horror film marketed as the next installment in the Fast & Furious franchise? That's a worthwhile topic of discussion on its own.)
But here's the most annoying thing: the so-called "teaser" for Bye Bye Man commits the unpardonable sin of claiming that the film is "Based on True Events," a stubbornly persistent declaration in modern-day horror trailers that typically has very little basis in fact. Believe me, I've looked into this.
The "true events" that The Bye Bye Man claims to be "based on" stem from a short story entitled The Bridge to Body Island by Robert Damon Schneck, included as a chapter in the author's 2005 "non-fiction" book The President's Vampire: Strange-but-True Tales of the United States of America. The story centers on three Wisconsin college students who experience strange events after experimenting with an Ouija board that dictates the terrifying legend of the titular bogeyman, an albinic, psychic serial killer residing in early 20th century Louisiana. Okay! Ready for how true this is? Here's how Schneck introduces the tale:
"This story is different from all the others in this book.
First, the source is a close friend..."
After a vivid first shot from very late in the action that’s perhaps a bit too much of a spoiler, the script (by Alvarez and Rodo Sayagues) rewinds to show our protagonists doing what they do to get ahead in Motor City: breaking into the houses of the wealthy and making off with whatever strikes their fancy, or that they can sell. They’re able to bypass the targets’ security system because Alex (Dylan Minnette) has inside intel; the owners are customers of his oblivious father’s security company. He’s a somewhat reluctant participant pulled in by unrequited feelings toward Rocky (Jane Levy), who’s trying to raise enough funds to get herself and her preschool daughter out of a bleak domestic situation. Her somewhat loutish b.f., Money (Daniel Zovatto), is in it just for kicks.
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Money hears of a blinded military veteran living alone who may have a pile of green on hand, since he won a major settlement after his only child’s death in a reckless driving incident. Alex is not thrilled — stealing actual cash would put them in a harsher criminal-offense category if caught — but Rocky is eager to seize a chance at accruing getaway funds fast. Ergo, the young trio find themselves outside the only house occupied for blocks around in an abandoned neighborhood. After sedating the owner’s Rottweiler, they manage to get in.
But things almost immediately go south. The resident (Stephen Lang), billed only as “The Blind Man,” may be sightless but is far from helpless, and it eventually emerges that he’s hiding something beyond cold currency. Their numbers fast winnowed, the panicked thieves soon retreat to a locked basement where they make an alarming discovery that explains their intended victim’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward intruders.
Rebecca(Teresa Palmer) returns to her family home after a tragedy draws her back into her hometown. Upon arriving, Rebecca begins to see a dark figure when she turns out the lights, but the figure is gone after she turns on the lights.
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Soon after grieving with her family over the death of her father Paul(Billy Burke), Rebecca learns that her brother, Martin(Gabriel Bateman) can also see the figure in the dark. Soon Rebecca starts putting together the clues, discovering that more people could be seeing what she's saying than they lead on to believe. The matriarch of their family, Sophie(Maria Bello) is also hiding something dark from her family, and that secret may very well put them all in danger. Seeking out help for her and her brother's affliction, Rebecca seeks out others who have encountered the same spectre in the dark. After an incident that can't go unaddressed, Sophie(Bello) explains to her family of what the dark figure could be. Her childhood friend, Diana had been involved in a tragic death at a very young age, imminently after Diana's death, strange events began to occur all over town. Now the threat is back to make victims of Sophie's family as well. Rebecca and Martin are safe in the light, but how long will the lights stay on?
Six years after losing her son Oliver in a car accident in India, his mother Maria is a wreck. During the accident, Maria chose to save her youngest daughter Lucy instead of Oliver and the guilt devastated her. One night, her husband Michael finds Maria unconscious after a failed suicide attempt. In the hospital, Maria is comforted by her housekeeper Piki. Piki asks Maria if she wants one final chance to say goodbye to Oliver.
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She explains that in her village, there is an abandoned temple where the line between the living and the dead is very thin. Maria must scatter her son's ashes at the temple steps and lock herself in. Oliver will speak to her once night falls. However, no matter what Oliver says, Maria must not open the temple door for him. Maria agrees and the pair have Oliver's body exhumed and burned. Maria notices some strange men covered in ash. Piki explains that they are shamans who consume the flesh of the dead and coat themselves in ash to strengthen their bonds between the worlds of the living and the dead.
The next day Maria arrives at the temple and follows Piki's instructions. Inside, she uncovers a mummified corpse of a woman. Night falls and Oliver begins talking to Maria, who apologizes to Oliver for leaving him. Oliver starts pleading with Maria to open the door and explains that someone is taking him. Maria panics and opens the door but sees no one. She returns home the next day; now having closure, she focuses her attention on Michael and Lucy but doesn't tell Piki that she opened the door. Strange things start happening; their piano plays itself and Lucy tells Maria that Oliver has come back and that he is hiding from someone. In, Oliver's room, a chair moves toward her, along with The Jungle Book, which Maria was reading to Oliver when he died but never finished. Realizing Oliver wants her to finish the book, she does so. Maria later has a nightmare. Piki notices that nearby plants have started dying and begins to realize that Maria has disobeyed his instructions at the temple.
Lucy's pet birds die suddenly and when Maria and Lucy go to bury them at sea, Maria has ash rubbed on her head by a shaman. Later, the decomposed body of Oliver appears near Lucy. Maria discovers a bite mark on her shoulder, implied to be Oliver's doing. She enters Oliver's room and tells him that he can't hurt Lucy. Oliver pulls out the chair and book again and Maria starts reading to him as long as he doesn't hurt Lucy. A shaman appears at the house and points behind Maria; she sees the mummified body from the temple behind her, which chases her. The next day, an outraged Piki confronts Maria and explains to her that due to her actions, Oliver's soul has become evil and is now on the loose; the door that she opened was preventing him from leaving. He reveals that the strange figure Maria was chased by is The Gate Keeper, who reclaims the soul of the dead. Piki urges Maria to burn all of Oliver’s possessions to break his hold on the living world or he will continue to cause harm to the family.
After captivating and enchanting audiences with the neon-glowing Los Angeles setting of Drive, director Nicolas Winding Refn is ready to return to the Southern California city with his next project. But rather than once again putting Ryan Gosling back behind the wheel while wearing a scorpion jacket, this time the Danish filmmaker will be centering his story on what he describes as a "vicious beauty." Get ready to meet The Neon Demon.
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As part of the on-going American Film Market, production companies Gaumont and Wild Bunch have revealed that the horror tale The Neon Demon will be the next film brought to the silver screen by Nicolas Winding Refn. While details about the movie's actual plot are rather limited, it has been confirmed that the movie will be led by a cast of young female actresses and is based on an original screenplay by Refn and co-writer Mary Laws.
In case you couldn't already tell, the cast has not yet been found for the film, though we can probably expect announcements to start coming in over the next few weeks. Refn has attracted some fantastic actresses to his work in the past - with Cary Mulligan and Christina Hendricks leaping to mind - so it will be interesting to see who he brings in for The Neon Demon.
Madison "Maddie" Young (Kate Siegel), a young deaf author who lost her hearing after a bout of bacterial meningitis at age 13, is living inside a small cottage in the woods and surviving off the money from her books. Her friend and neighbor Sarah (Samantha Sloyan) visits her one evening and while walking home, is chased back to Maddie's cottage by a masked man (John Gallagher Jr.). Sarah bangs on the doors for help, but Maddie can't hear her cries as the masked man stabs her on the doorstep.
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The man quickly realizes Maddie's disability and uses it to his advantage. He sneaks into the house, takes her phone, and begins taking photos of her and sending them to her laptop to make her aware of his presence. As Maddie realizes she's being stalked, she locks herself inside the house as the man cuts the power and sabotages her car. Maddie writes that "[She] didn't see his face and won't tell anyone" on a window in lipstick and the man responds by revealing himself, so that Maddie has seen his face giving him a reason to kill her too. The man taunts Maddie by propping Sarah's body up against the window. Maddie tries distracting him with her car alarm and tries reaching outside for Sarah's phone from her body. The plan backfires and the man attacks, but she fights him off.
The pursuit continues as Maddie makes several attempts to escape, eventually climbing through a second story window onto the roof. Once on the roof, she tries distracting him and making a run for it but her plan fails when she doesn't fool him long enough and he begins firing a crossbow up at her, hitting her leg. As he's climbing up the side of the house to finish her off, she manages to knock him off the roof and take his crossbow in the process. Going back into the house, she tries frantically to load the crossbow as Sarah's boyfriend John (Michael Trucco) arrives at the house looking for Sarah. The man confronts John, pretending that he is a police officer on a dispatch call to Maddie's residence. He pretends to call for back-up on John's phone as John gets more suspicious about him. John prepares to attack the man, but Maddie bangs on the glass which distracts John, and the man stabs him in the neck.
Here’s an interesting fact: the Suicide Squad trailer that debuted at Comic-Con and was later released online has more views than any of the three Batman vs. Superman trailers so far. This despite there being few recognizable superheroes in Suicide Squad and Batman vs. Superman including pretty much the two biggest superheroes in the world (and Wonder Woman!). It’s fair to say people are pretty excited about Suicide Squad, so with that, we bring you this new official plot synopsis, which tells us a little bit more about the movie.
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First the new details as revealed by DC as part of a new set of DC Collectibles that will include Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Killer Croc and The Joker statues.
It feels good to be bad…Assemble a team of the world’s most dangerous, incarcerated Super Villains, provide them with the most powerful arsenal at the government’s disposal, and send them off on a mission to defeat an enigmatic, insuperable entity. U.S. intelligence officer Amanda Waller has determined only a secretly convened group of disparate, despicable individuals with next to nothing to lose will do. However, once they realize they weren’t picked to succeed but chosen for their patent culpability when they inevitably fail, will the Suicide Squad resolve to die trying, or decide it’s every man for himself?
You might think that The Joker being The Joker, he might be the “enigmatic, insuperable” entity that the Suicide Squad are out to stop, but multiple reports claim that Cara Delevingne’s Enchantress is actually the film’s villain (fitting that you don’t see her in the lineup with the rest of the cast above). There have been rumors that following the events of Batman vs. Superman, Lex Luthor is actually manipulating Enchantress, who is already having difficulty controlling her newfound powers, to weaponize her against the government and, eventually, free him from prison. Jesse Eisenberg was rumored to be joining Suicide Squad but was never confirmed; is Warner Bros. trying to keep his involvement secret?
After all this time, I was fairly resigned to think that Jeff Goldblum’s man-to-insect metamorphosis in Cronenberg’s The Fly was one of the queasiest body transformations I’d seen. However, after laying eyes upon Chad Archibald’s Bite, I’d have to say that Mr. Goldblum might have a run for his money.
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Coming off of two lackluster directorial entries (The Drownsman, Ejecta), Archibald reloads and this time delivers heavily with his look at a nubile young woman whose bachelorette party/vacation proves to be a real itch… see what I did there? Anyway, the bride-to-be is Casey (Begovic), and she is whisked off to Costa Rica by some alcohol-deprived bridesmaids for a little R&R, and from the film’s opening scenes, I was immediately getting that sick feeling in my gut. Was it from some unrelenting gore splashed across the screen? No! It was from my true-to-life arch-nemesis: first-person camera usage (a la found footage). At this point, the urge to dropkick my laptop across the room overcame me, but with some patented Lamaze breathing techniques, I simmered down and let the movie play on.
Thankfully, the shaky-cam vision was merely a tool to illustrate the ignorance of one of Casey’s bridal party members – shoot as much footage of inebriated, uncoordinated chicks attempting to dance in a club, while being pawed by some douchenozzles that probably have the words “dude” and “bro” tattooed somewhere on their persons. Movin on – after Casey is roofied and raped by some sleazy club-goer, then robbed of her possessions (including her very impressive engagement rock), the group decides to go for a little dip in a remote quarry the next day, and that’s where our story gets very interesting. Never mind the fact that Casey was sexually assaulted and had her booty burgled (in more ways than one) – good friends don’t let you sulk over a traumatic crime, at least not when there’s the opportunity to wade in some murky, disease-infested water in a third-world swimmin’ hole!
While floating about in the scummy lagoon, Casey is bitten on the leg by some unexplained critter, and after the vacation has come to a close, she realizes that this isn’t any old nip on the stem – this thing is throbbing, growing in size, and leaking fluid faster than a cracked radiator… silly me, not fluid – PUS. Large, discolored quantities of pus – it trickles, it seeps, it collects on the floor – and during one romantic rendezvous in the sack with her momma’s boy of a fiancé (Gray) – it literally gushes all over her lover’s hand and ceases coital activity immediately. As if Casey’s fiancé needed any more cause to stay away from his future bride, his incredibly venomous mother (Lawrene Denkers in a fantastically evil role) seems to bristle at the sight of his forthcoming mate – this woman is plain nasty, right down to her two-ply panties.
As the film rolls along, whatever the hell is overtaking Casey’s body composition is working overtime, and every time the poor woman shifts her legs, she seems to gush a cascading, orange-tinted crystalline gathering of globules out of her… fish shack, if you will – it covers the walls of her apartment and the floor, turning her entire crash-pad into some kind of cocoon.
The Choice” tells the story of Travis Parker (Walker) and Gabby Holland (Palmer), who meet first as neighbors in a small coastal town and end up pursuing a relationship that neither could have foreseen.
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Spanning a decade and tracing the evolution of a love affair that is ultimately tested by life’s most defining events, this story features a memorable ensemble of friends and family in Sparks’s beloved North Carolina setting, culminating in the question that every couple must ask themselves: how far would you go to keep the hope of love alive?
Louisa “Lou” Clark (Clarke) lives in a quaint town in the English countryside. With no clear direction in her life, the quirky and creative 26-year-old goes from one job to the next in order to help her tight-knit family make ends meet. Her normally cheery outlook is put to the test, however,
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when she faces her newest career challenge. Taking a job at the local “castle,” she becomes caregiver and companion to Will Traynor (Claflin), a wealthy young banker who became wheelchair bound in an accident two years prior, and whose whole world changed dramatically in the blink of an eye. No longer the adventurous soul he once was, the now cynical Will has all but given up. That is until Lou determines to show him that life is worth living. Embarking together on a series of adventures, both Lou and Will get more than they bargained for, and find their lives—and hearts—changing in ways neither one could have imagined.
Miramax and Broad Green Pictures announced today that principal photography has begun in Montréal, Québec, Canada on Bad Santa 2. The sequel is a follow-up to the raucous comedy hit Bad Santa first released in 2003. Geyer Kosinski will produce. Billy Bob Thornton is reprising his iconic role as Willie Soke in the sequel, with Mad Men star Christina Hendricks joining the cast last week.
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Miramax has partnered with Broad Green Pictures to co-finance and co-produce Bad Santa. Broad Green will distribute Bad Santa 2 theatrically in the U.S. during the 2016 holiday season. Sierra/Affinity will handle foreign sales with sales starting at the upcoming American Film Market (November 4-11, 2015). Said Zanne Devine, Miramax's EVP of Film & TV.
"We've been waiting far too long to see Billy Bob's Willie Soke mess with the holiday season in his own unique way. We couldn't be more excited to partner with Billy Bob, the entire creative and producing team, and Broad Green and Sierra/Affinity to bring back the outrageous humor and characters that made this movie brand iconic in the first place."
The Bad Santa 2 cast also includes Kathy Bates, who portrays Willie Soke's mother, described as a "foul-mouthed" woman. Tony Cox (Marcus) and Brett Kelly (The Kid) will also reprise their roles from the original Bad Santa, but it isn't known if others such as Lauren Graham or Lauren Tom will be back for this follow-up. No story details have been released at this point, but hopefully we'll learn more as production gets under way.
David Thwaites is overseeing the project for Miramax and Victor Moyers for Broad Green Pictures. Bad Santa 2 is the latest project in a busy Miramax pipeline of new content. In July, Miramax in partnership with Roadside Attractions released the critically acclaimed summer specialty box office hit Mr. Holmes starring Academy Award nominees Ian McKellen and Laura Linney; in January, Miramax partnered with Sony-Screen Gems on the release of the Kevin Hart comedy hit The Wedding Ringer; the supernatural thriller TThe 9th Life of Louis Drax starring Jamie Dornan, Aaron Paul and Sarah Gadon is in post-production and represents Miramax's first foreign sales partnership with Sierra/Affinity; and as recently announced, Universal, Miramax and StudioCanal are co-financing Bridget Jones' Baby with Working Title producing. As a television studio, Miramax also just jointly announced with El Rey Network the third season of From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, with season two having concluded on El Rey Network on October 27.
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” opens in 1926 as Newt Scamander has just completed a global excursion to find and document an extraordinary array of magical creatures. Arriving in New York for a brief stopover, he might have come and gone without incident…were it not for a No-Maj (American for Muggle) named Jacob, a misplaced magical case, and the escape of some of Newt’s fantastic beasts, which could spell trouble for both the wizarding and No-Maj worlds.
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“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” also stars Katherine Waterston (“Steve Jobs,” “Inherent Vice”) as Tina; Tony Award winner Dan Fogler (“The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee”) as Jacob; Alison Sudol (“Dig,” “Transparent”) as Tina’s sister, Queenie; Ezra Miller (“Trainwreck”) as Credence; two-time Oscar nominee Samantha Morton (“In America,” “Sweet and Lowdown”) as Mary Lou; Oscar winner Jon Voight (“Coming Home,” TV’s “Ray Donovan”) as Henry Shaw, Sr.; Ron Perlman (the “Hellboy” films) as Gnarlack; Carmen Ejogo (“Selma”) as Seraphina; Jenn Murray (“Brooklyn”) as Chastity; young newcomer Faith Wood-Blagrove as Modesty; and Colin Farrell (“True Detective”) as Percival Graves.
The film marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, whose beloved Harry Potter books were adapted into the top-grossing film franchise of all time. Her script was inspired by the Hogwarts textbook Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, written by her character Newt Scamander.
The film reunites a number of people from the “Harry Potter” features, including producers David Heyman, J.K. Rowling, Steve Kloves and Lionel Wigram.
Collaborating with Yates behind the scenes are: Oscar-winning director of photography Philippe Rousselot (“A River Runs Through It,” the “Sherlock Holmes” movies), three-time Oscar-winning production designer Stuart Craig (“The English Patient,” “Dangerous Liaisons,” “Gandhi,” the “Harry Potter” films), three-time Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood (“Chicago,” “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Alice in Wonderland”), Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Tim Burke (“Gladiator,” the “Harry Potter” films), Oscar-nominated visual effects supervisor Christian Manz (“Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1”), and Yates’ longtime editor Mark Day (the last four “Harry Potter” films).
The ever-changing release date saga of Paramount's Rings has added yet another chapter, with the studio pushing the horror sequel back once again, although this change may be for the best. Deadline reports that the studio has pushed Rings from April 1 to the horror-friendly date of October 28. The studio also moved up Richard Linklater's comedy Everybody Wants Some from April 15 up to April 1.
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Rings was originally set up as a sequel to 2002's The Ring and 2005's The Ring Two, but it kept getting delayed for several years. In 2010, David Loucka came on board to write the script, when the project was being envisioned as a 3D thriller. F. Javier Gutiérrez came aboard to direct in 2014, and casting started early last year, when Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz came aboard, and the project was re-titled Rings. The studio originally gave the project a March 13, 2015 release date in 2013, which was pushed to November 13, 2015 release date, then to April 1, 2016 and now it's set for October 28, 2016, where it will go up against Inferno and an untitled Lionsgate horror film.
Rings began production in March, with director F. Javier Gutiérrez confirming that the sequel takes place 13 years after the original thriller, The Ring. The story centers on Holt (Alex Roe), who suddenly starts to become distant to his girlfriend Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) after watching a bizarre videotape. The original film The Ring, which starred Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson and Brian Cox, centered on a tape that causes each person who watches it to die seven days later.
The supporting cast of Rings is rounded out by Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Laura Wiggins, Zach Roerig, Andrea Powell, Brandon Larracuente, Dave Blamy and Surely Alvelo. Shortly after filming started, a rumor surfaced that the character Aidan Keller, played by David Dorfman in The Ring and The Ring Two, will appear as an adult, but that report was never confirmed, and it isn't known if David Dorfman is coming back to reprise his role.
F. Javier Gutiérrez (Before the Fall) is directing from a script by David Loucka (House at the End of the Street), Jacob Aaron Estes (Mean Creek) and Akiva Goldsman (Star Trek Into Darkness). It will now be going up against Sony's Inferno and an untitled horror movie from Lionsgate. Everybody Wants Some, which is described as a "spiritual sequel" to Richard Linklater's Dazed and Confused, will now face Open Road Films' Collide, The Weinstein Company's Amityville: The Awakening and PureFlix's God's Not Dead 2. What do you think about these release date changes?
Yesterday we got our first official look at Paramount Pictures' Ben-Hur with new photos featuring stars Jack Huston and Morgan Freeman. As it turns out, we didn't have to wait too long for the first footage, since Paramount Pictures debuted the trailer today, along with the new poster. Production started on MGM's Ben-Hur remake in Rome more than a year ago, although the production was quite guarded and we didn't see any photos or footage from the set.
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Ben-Hur is the epic story of Judah Ben-Hur (Jack Huston), a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala (Toby Kebbell), an officer in the Roman army. Stripped of his title, separated from his family and the woman he loves (Nazanin Boniadi), Judah is forced into slavery. After years at sea, Judah returns to his homeland to seek revenge, but finds redemption. Based on Lew Wallace's timeless novel, Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.
Morgan Freeman stars as Ilderim, who becomes Ben-Hur's trainer and mentor, with Rodrigo Santoro portraying Jesus Christ. The story is adapted closer to the novel, which tells the tale of Jesus in parallel with the main story. This wasn't included in the original classic. The photos from yesterday teased the chariot races, which are arguably the most iconic scenes from the 1959 blockbuster. Director Timur Bekmambetov said yesterday that these scenes are also the "crown jewel" of the remake.
Jack Huston revealed that he spent two and a half months rehearsing this sequence and filming it in Italy, and at one point, they each had 32 horses running at the same time. The supporting cast includes Sofia Black-D'Elia, Ayelet Zurer, Moises Arias and Pilou Asbæk. Paramount has set an August 12 release date for the remake, where it will face some stiff competition.
Ben-Hur will be going up against another highly-anticipated remake, Disney's Pete's Dragon, along with Sony's R-rated animated comedy Sausage Party and Universal's action-thriller Spectral. In case you missed them yesterday, you can also check out the first two photos below this new trailer and poster. Are you looking forward to a new version of Ben-Hur?
With production scheduled to start next month in Detroit, the cast of Paramount's Transformers 5 is starting to come together. Jerrod Carmichael, who created and stars in NBC's hit sitcom The Carmichael Show, has signed on for an unspecified role in director Michael Bay's action-packed sequel. No details have been given regarding his role at this time.
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The comedian joins Mark Wahlberg, reprising his role as Cade Yeager from 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction, alongside newcomer Isabela Moner. According to The Wrap, the actress will play the female lead of Izabela, a young girl whose only friend is said to be a small Transformer, until she meets Cade Yeager. Izabela is described as a "street tough" orphan who was raised within the foster care system. No other cast members have come aboard at this time, and it isn't known how many roles the production still needs to fill.
It also isn't known yet if Nicola Peltz (Tessa Yeager) and Jack Reynor (Shane Dyson) will be reprising their roles in the sequel. The story is set in the aftermath of 2014's Transformers: Age of Extinction, with Optimus Prime heading into space to find the The Quintessons, creators of the Transformers race. A recent profile on director Michael Bay teased "an underwater rendering of a crash-landed alien spaceship," along with a "new dump-truck Transformer with a cloak."
Michael Bay is directing from a script by Ken Nolan and the writing team of Art Marcum & Matt Holloway. All three scribes were part of the Transformers "writers room" that came together last summer to craft ideas for sequels and spinoffs. Akiva Goldsman, who lead the writers room, was originally scheduled to write Transformers 5 himself. He was later brought on to oversee new writers rooms for G.I. Joe 3 and Micronauts, making him unavailable to write Transformers 5.
Jerrod Carmichael made his feature film debut in the 2014 comedy blockbuster Neighbors, portraying Garf, a role which he will reprise in this summer's sequel Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising. He also stars in the indie comedy The Meddler, alongside Rose Byrne, Lucy Punch and Susan Sarandon, and in James Franco's latest directorial effort, The Masterpiece, which is based on the making of The Room. Stay tuned for more casting updates on Transformers 5 as we get closer to production starting next month.
Before there was Amityville, there was Harrisville. Based on a true story, The Conjuring tells the horrifying tale of how world renowned paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren were called upon to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in a secluded farmhouse. Forced to confront a powerful demonic entity, the Warrens find themselves caught in the most terrifying case of their lives.
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The Conjuring stars Academy Award® nominee Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air, Orphan) and Patrick Wilson (Young Adult, Prometheus) as the Warrens, and Ron Livingston (HBO's Band of Brothers) and Lili Taylor (Public Enemies) as Roger and Carolyn Perron, residents of the house.
Joey King (Crazy, Stupid, Love), Shanley Caswell (Detention), Haley McFarland (TV's Lie to Me), Mackenzie Foy (The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn) and newcomer Kyla Deaver play the Perrons' five daughters, and Sterling Jerins (World War Z) is the Warrens' little girl, Judy.
James Wan (Saw, Insidious) directs from a screenplay by Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes (The Reaping).
A powerful film about the nature of childhood, family and war – Beasts of No Nation tells an uncompromising story aided by the talents of its two lead actors.
An unrelenting, violent film, Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation opens not with gunshots, or screaming, but with the sounds of childhood laughter. When young Agu (Abraham Attah) has his happy life and family torn apart by an unspecified African civil war, he flees into the jungle to an almost certain death. Through a series of unfortunate events, he finds himself recruited by the rebel Native Defense Force, and falls under the command of the mysterious yet magnetic Commandant (Idris Elba). What follows is a movie about the nature of family, love, and the way in which war can blacken a once-pure soul.
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The film does not concern itself with the politics or rationale behind the ambiguous civil war in an unnamed African country, and it gets bogged down during the few times that it does. Agu’s point-of-view and the audience’s point-of-view are immediately one and the same; the nature of the conflict and the looming danger early in the film are communicated through worried looks on the faces of adults, and bits of radio broadcast.
From there, this young character begins to lose everyone and everything he cares about one by one in a sequence of devastating losses. Such a progression of dire circumstances completely sells us on his willingness to sign on to the NDR when it finally finds him – he’s broken, desperate, and will probably be killed if he doesn’t agree to fight, anyway. Fukunaga does an excellent job of drawing comparisons between Agu’s old life and his new one, showing how he becomes indoctrinated into combat when war and training supplant his childhood games in a very Lord of the Flies-esque manner.
Films centering on the myriad conflicts of the African continent are nothing new, with stories like Blood Diamond, Hotel Rwanda, and Black Hawk Down becoming modern classics in recent years. However, those films almost universally told these harsh stories through the eyes of outsiders, or people on the morally righteous side of their respective conflict. Beasts of No Nation sets itself apart with its willingness to broach its subject matter from the point of view of an aggressor. Agu didn’t start this war, he has most certainly become a victim of it, but by the time the credits roll, the audience still cannot condone or justify the things he has done.
Anyone who has watched True Detective’s impeccable first season already knows that Fukunaga can craft beautiful visuals, and he certainly uses that skill to great effect in Beasts. The film has the feel of a documentary, as Fukunaga uses handheld shots, long takes, and natural lighting to follow Agu and his friends while they have fun and fight side by side. At times only the presence of the recognizable Elba is what reminds us that we are watching a movie.
With its flawed approach to character, and wonky structure, Rock The Kasbah is hard to clinically define as a “good” movie, but its merits as a fine and enjoyable one are certainly arguable.
Bill Murray’s presence in a film can be a tremendously powerful thing. After all, the guy has spent decades hypnotizing us with his charm and building up good will in the public consciousness, and we’re now at a point where his appearance gives any project he’s involved with a certain edge where being appreciable is concerned. This is basically the story of director Barry Levinson’s Rock The Kasbah - an entirely scattershot dramedy that only remains held together by Murray’s performance.
Trailer:
Based on an original screenplay by Mitch Glazer, the film stars Bill Murray as Richie Lanz, a big-talking, aging music manager working out of a dumpy office in Van Nuys, CA doing everything in his power to try and find something even remotely resembling success. Unfortunately, his only really talented client is a flighty warbler named Ronnie (Zooey Deschanel) who he won’t let sing anything but covers in small local joints. While Richie struggles to stay afloat, an opportunity comes his way that he believes will be his big break: getting Ronnie on the USO Tour in Afghanistan. Of course, this doesn’t exactly go as planned.
Shortly after arriving in the Middle East, Ritchie finds himself completely stranded, as Ronnie freaks out and sells all of his belongings to a mercenary (Bruce Willis) to help her get back to America. Destitute and passport-less, he finds himself in serious trouble, but finds a glimmer of salvation after teaming up with a pair of arms dealers (Danny McBride, Scott Caan) leads him to hear the beautiful singing voice of a Pashtun girl (Leem Lubany) whom Ritchie thinks can find big success through the Afghanistan version of American Idol.
If that plot description reads as dense, top heavy, and just a bit all over the place, then I’ve done my job recreating the experience following Rock The Kasbah’s story. The film often seems to try and play as an ensemble piece – with Deschanel, Willis, McBride, Caan, and Kate Hudson popping in and out throughout the runtime – but it never really fully hangs together simply because the characters feel more like tools of the narrative than actual people. To all of the actors’ credit, they do a fine job opposite Murray and provide plenty for the star to work with/against, but they also feel much more like stencils than fleshed-out forms.
This film has all the building blocks to be a great fantasy ride, and Diesel is clearly enthused to be a part of it. As it turns out, though, passion isn’t everything.
It’s clear from the press notes that the screenwriter of The Last Witch Hunter, Cory Goodman, put a lot of thought into the mythology behind this fantastical universe. While the character of Kaulder, a centuries-old witch hunter, is loosely based on a character from Dungeons & Dragons (Vin Diesel’s favorite character, a dark elf named Melkor), the world is an original conception. The witches see themselves as protectors of the natural world, often battling humanity with mental-manipulating magic. These creatures commenced with a war against humans after seeing the destruction of Mother Nature. This is all fine and dandy, but it was not that clear in the film — or maybe it was. I can’t be sure, because I wasn’t paying attention half the time. Let me explain.
Trailer:
I live for fantasy. I’m the guy who still loves watching Tom Cruise chase the unicorn in Legend. I’m the guy who was still (sort of) into Seventh Son, even when Jeff Bridges became way too ridiculous (even for himself). I’m the guy who recently participated in a drunken night of Magic: The Gathering while simultaneously belting along to the soundtrack to Sound of Music. I like my fantasy… but I am not the guy who liked The Last Witch Hunter, which highlights the many pitfalls that can come when trying to write fantasy.
The film begins in an interesting way with this slight Constantinian edge. With traces of the Keanu Reeves film, Kaulder starts investigating the apparent death of his previous Dolan and stumbles across a much darker plot. This edge is lost when he splits his attention between the case at hand and explaining what’s going on to his new righthand: how witches live in the shadows of modern society and keep their magic hidden; how there’s a long line of hunter helpers called Dolans (like Elijah Wood’s character); how Kaulder was cursed with immortality by a witch queen, and now she’s back to unleash a plague of Black Death upon the world, and things like that. This is the main reason why it was hard to force myself to sit through the film — which, mind you, is only an hour and 46 minutes.
The funny thing is, though, that there are still a lot of details that fall through the cracks, specifically in terms of the mythology. The press notes (again) lay out the longer version of the story, including details like how the witches can’t shapeshift per se, but rather alter the minds of those around to make them see whatever they want. It seems silly to create all these details but still have them not come across clearly when the story plays out. Yet, that’s what happens. The Last Witch Hunter is one of those films with pretty good special effects. Some of it is practical, like the flesh of the witch queen and the jagged branches in her lair. When it comes to the witches, their abilities are, for the most part, wonders to behold — sans those floating, dripping balls of light inside the witch bar. But even they lose their luster against the muddied plot.
There are too many fumbles, too many missteps, and the most interesting bits of the film are swept off the cutting board and into the trash.
Somewhere inside of Burnt, maybe not even all that far below the surface, is a sharp, cutting, very good film. A movie where the protagonist – a cocky, disgraced, once-super chef Adam Jones (Bradley Cooper) who states that his goal is to make food so good that people have to stop eating -- certainly has similarly lofty goals. While there are glimpses of what may have been greatness, the film on screen is jumbled, confused, and never fully cooked.
Trailer:
Right out of the gate, in unnecessary voiceover that is never heard from again, Burnt explains how the once great Jones fell from grace, washing out in Paris thanks to rampant drug use and a hard partying lifestyle. He then surfaces in New Orleans, shucking 1 million oysters as a self-imposed penance for his sins. This is all explained again, and much less ham-fistedly, through subsequent scenes, dialogue and interaction with other characters. So, immediately, the film starts repeating itself.
When he moves to London to set up a restaurant and score an elusive three-star Michelin rating, there’s an assembling-the-crew vibe, as he handpicks the staff of his new joint. There’s Tony (Daniel Bruhl), a world-class maître-d with ties to Adam’s past; former protégé, Michel (Omar Sy), who he screwed over; a new protégé, David (Sam Keely), who worships him; and Helene (Sienna Miller), a burgeoning chef who “doesn’t know how good she is.” It’s a dream team, and while this part of the film is entertaining and even resembles a heist movie, it’s not long before Steven Knight’s (Eastern Promises) script perilously balances a number of plates, and director John Wells (August: Osage County) sends many tumbling to the floor. Or worse, ignores them completely and let’s them just sit on the counter.
A number of potentially interesting threads are introduced then forgotten, underdeveloped, or left alone until it’s convenient for them to show up again. Burnt touches on ideas of OCD and addiction, but never in any real, meaningful way, including when Adam sees Dr. Rosshilde (Emma Thompson) for a weekly drug test — she’s also a therapist, but Adam don’t do therapy. There’s a one-sided romance angle that rears up in an attempt to make one character even remotely interesting and add texture to the narrative, only to be tied off all too quickly. Helene’s story even touches on the struggles of a single mother trying to make it in an industry that demands every waking second, but again, this aside is dispensed with as unceremoniously as other, less interesting, concerns take precedence.
With all of these various balls in the air, everything is rushed and hurried and glossed over. Uma Thurman shows up for two early scenes as a food critic who plays a pivotal role in Adam’s plan then evaporates. Alicia Vikander also gets two scenes as an ex from Adam’s troubled past, though there is little substance to her role other than making coy faces. Early on, Adam even hires an old cohort straight out prison, and though he’s set up as keg of dynamite with a sharp temper, all he does after that is take up space in the kitchen and is forgotten.
