All of director Kelly Reichardt's movies have made great use of silence. The extended trip to an outdoor sauna in Old Joy immediately leaps to my mind as a great example of this. Ditto the quiet endings of Meek's Cutoff and Leaves of Grass that eschew dialogue to allow the audience to fully absorb the entire movie. In her 2016 feature film Certain Women, a hushed quality washes over the proceedings even when characters are trading lines of dialogue. Everyone in this movie is plagued by some kind of woe that they've lived with for so long that they deal with it in subdued terms. Even a situation where a man holds another man hostage at gunpoint doesn't feature so much as somebody raising their voices.
For the character Certain Women, what's the point of yelling? Doing that in the face of their anguish would be like throwing a pebble at a tank. Writer/director Kelly Reichardt communicates this idea in a haunting fashion throughout the trio of stories that Certain Women explores. A hundred torture porn movies with all their grisly mutilations wish they had the harrowing quality of Reichardt's filmmaking in Certain Women.
Right now in London, director Chloe Zhao is directing The Eternals, the twenty-fifth entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. This Angelina Jolie-headlined motion picture will be the fourth directorial effort from Zhao but it will easily be the biggest motion picture she's helmed. Up to this point, Zhao has directed indie features so small in scale that they make the earlier works of fellow MCU directors like James Gunn or Jon Favreau look like Cecil B. DeMille epics by comparison. However, such an intimate storytelling approach has worked exceedingly well for the fascinating stories Zhao (who is tied with Ryan Coogler and Taika Waititi as the most talented director Marvel has ever snagged for one of their movies) has chosen to tell. Such films have included The Rider, one of last years best movies, and her directorial debut Songs My Brothers Taught Me.
Our current golden age of horror movies doesn't just apply to American horror features like Get Out, A Quiet Place or Hereditary, plenty of recent pieces of foreign horror cinema have also contributed to the onslaught of modern-day high-quality horror fare. Among the very best of those horror films, foreign or otherwise, is Yeon Sang-ho's Train to Busan, a 2016 zombie tale that I finally got around to watching for the first time last week. I'll be forever kicking myself for not discovering this title far sooner. It's been so long since a movie left me so constantly holding my breath in sheer dread and terror. Why did I waste time watching CHiPS when I could have been experiencing Train to Busan??
Jack Reacher: Never Go Back is the perfect movie for people who were chomping at the bit to see a Tom Cruise blockbuster worse than The Mummy. It's a total snoozefest for everyone else, one that can't even muster up enough competent fistfights to satiate action film junkies. This Edward Zwick directed project looks and acts like a USA Network TV movie that inexplicably managed to cast one of the biggest movie stars of all-time in its lead role. While I found the first Jack Reacher to be a mixed bag, that very same motion picture looks like a John Wick movie in comparison to this turkey of a sequel.
"The ship is in the harbor now See if you can spot him (Just you wait) Another immigrant Coming up from the bottom" - Alexander Hamilton On this day, one year ago, I listened to the Hamilton soundtrack for the very first time.
In our dreams, anything is possible. You can go anywhere, you can be with anyone, you can do anything. In its own way, musicals are akin to dreams in that the stylized nature of these productions allows for an "anything goes" approach for storytelling to make the frequent action of bursting into song feel acceptable. Events like The Paris Uprising Of 1832, the psyche of felines or even the life of Alexander Hamilton can all become easy fodder for musical theater, all told with a heightened guise that allows the musical aspect of these productions to truly flourish. After all, just because you're telling a somber tale doesn't mean you can't use a musical number to express a characters emotions (just look at how enduring opera has been through the centuries).
Our past define ourselves. Not to sound too weird or what have you, but our future and our past can be one and the same creation. One portion of our existence informs the other in numerous ways, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill. Keep this in mind as Krisha unfolds, a motion picture all too aware that our actions from the past have consequences that are felt long into the future. Just because tomorrow comes does not mean the slate is clean in terms of both other people's perception of you and your perception of yourself. That concept can make life a struggle and that's certainly one way to describe the sort of existence Krisha (Krisha Fairchild) is going through on this Thanksgiving Day.
When you become a celebrity, your life is no longer your own.
Your reach extends outward almost infinitely, not just to the way your friends and family are affected by your level of exposure, but also in the way your fame resonates with the public. A kid in Wyoming who could become the next great scientist could have gotten his passion for the world of beakers and measurements ignited by the presence of Neil DeGrasse Tyson or deceased figures like Albert Einstein who are leaving their mark on this planet even long after they've left this life. How could O.J. Simpson not be a similarly influential figure? In the late 60's, a time of upheaval for African-Americans, he claimed incredible sports accomplishments that made him one of the more notable African-American sports figures in recent memory.
While dabbling in some weird-ish fantasy oriented imagery and having the requisite outsider protagonist that have been hallmarks of Tim Burton's work for decades now, Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children may be one of the most generic films to come from the director, right alongside that Planet Of The Apes remake he did back in 2001. Don't mistake generic inherently for "worst", Miss Peregrine is most certainly better than Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, the defensive nadir of Burton's work as a director, but it does feel like any sort of identity he usually brings with him to his work has been sanded off.
I can sometimes be a bit of a dummy when it comes to grappling with the more subtle nuances of distinctly esoteric pieces of art, so take this bold theory about Yoga Hosers that I'm about to drop on you with a grain of salt. I think this movie...was set...in Canada. It's kind of a shocking idea, but there are some subdued clues scatted throughout the motion picture that lead me to believe that that's where this specific tale is set. For instance, did you notice the endless parade of jokes about Canadian accents (which our two main characters infrequently sport)? Or the end credits where the two leads since a rendition of O, Canada? Stuff like that is what made my mind question if this movie was set in the Great White North.
The first Purge movie back in 2013 was a blah movie that was heavy on trite storytelling and low on genuine scares while 2014's The Purge: Anarchy, was a so-so voyage into a Purge night that expanded the narrative scope from its predecessor with some lackluster characters and one or two truly inventive sequences. I wish The Purge: Election Year managed to even hit the moderate hits of that previous entry in this series, when it is instead a major step down in form that's surprisingly low on memorable action or scares.
Is Bryan Cranston just choosing his roles now depending on how much deceit his characters must exude? After playing Walter White for five excellent seasons on Breaking Bad, he's played Dalton Trumbo, a man who wrote screenplays in secret, and now, in his newest motion picture The Infiltrator, Cranston plays Robert Mazur, a man who regularly does undercover work (see where the deceit comes into play in this past?) for the U.S. Government. After a mission leaves him with a particularly nasty injury, he has the chance to retire...but he can't give up the chance to partake in a new mission that could take down tons of high-profile figures in the world of drug trafficking.
A deluge of family features will be arriving this summer, with the past weekend bringing the first of such films (The Angry Birds Movie) that we'll be seeing by the truckload over the next few months. This weekend brings Alice Through The Looking Glass and the weeks afterwards bring new Ninja Turtles and PIXAR films. And just like with any motion picture, before these family movies come out they're gonna release a trailer to promote themselves. Three of this year's more high-profile family films actually debuted new trailers this week so let's look at 'em now, shall we?
Out of all of this years crop of summer blockbusters, few carry as many question marks as this years Ghostbusters reboot. Can Paul Feig graduate to the realm of summer blockbusters with all the success of Christopher Nolan, the perfunctoryness of Collin Trevorrow or the failure of Marc Webb? Will the new group of Busters (Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones) work well as a team? Will whiny Mens Rights Activists ever shut up about the film "ruining" their childhoods? A trailer for the project has arrived today to answer give us a glimpse into the film that may answerr those questions and more.
With a high profile family film like Kung Fu Panda 3 coming out this Friday, it's to be expected that a number of family films have released trailers in order to get them seen in front of prospective audiences coming out to see Po the Panda. We got four trailers to look at today, so let's get started with my favorite of the bunch...
Kubo And The Two Strings https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-6qJzeb3A
Holy hell, how is this being done with stop-motion animation? Every frame of this trailer is absolutely beautiful to look at, but thankfully, there's not just style that one can gawk at in this trailer. I love how this trailer doesn't try to fill every second with hyperactive noise and/or jokes, but rather, establishes the plot, atmosphere and characters in a pleasant manner. All of that, plus, a roster of excellent voice actors (Charlize Theron! Ralph Fiennes! Rooney Mara! Matthew McConaughey!), and that excellent Beatles cover, and yeah, it's super easy for me to dub this as one helluva trailer. Consider Kubo And The Two Strings officially one of my most anticipated movies for the year.
Did ya like the atmospheric beauty of that Kubo trailer? Well, the rest of these trailers substitute that for bathroom humor and dancing to pop songs so....yay?
The Secret Life Of Pets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZJVc_JTI_w
Marking the fourth trailer for The Secret Life Of Pets in the span of seven months (and we've still got five months to go until this movies actually released!), this one brings more of a concrete plot to the proceedings, depicting Max (Louie C.K.), a dog, feeling his life upended when his owner gets a new mutt, Duke (Eric Stonestreet). Basically, it's the same character dynamic Toy Story and Over The Hedge have already done, and this trailer really brings nothing new to the table in terms of plot points or gags. It also looks like they're getting as much mileage as possible out of that heavy metal poodle joke, huh?
The Angry Birds Movie
I was relatively kind to The Angry Birds Movie when its first teaser arrived back in late September, but that goodwill towards its marketing has vanished with this new trailer. All I can really say about this one is that if you've ever had the compulsion to see a movie where Danny McBride spits urine into the eager mouth of Josh Gad, it looks like we've got a movie for you!
Trolls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDnRVKPjj8k
Oh my God.
This is real.
Small, easily marketable and toyetic characters dancing to a modern dad pop song (in this case Watch Me Whip/Watch Me Nae Nae)?
We've reached peak DreamWorks folks.
Hey, remember how good the How To Train Your Dragon movies were? Yeah, those were awesome.
Nine Lives https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPxI4yOKdgc
Early candidate for most bizarre project of 2016? I'll say yeah. Was this made by someone nostalgic for the days of late 90's live-action Disney family films (the kind made on the cheap and quick like You Favorite Martian and the That Darn Cat! remake), cause that's the kind of cinema this trailer evoked to me. I kind of wish with a premise ripped straight out of a Tropic Thunder trailer parody they went with a more oddball premise than more of this "dad needs to learn to spend more time with his kid" tripe. I'm also pretty certain nothing Christopher Walken does here will top this beautiful insanity from Gigli:
Let's time travel back to the year 2007, when an eleven year old NerdInTheBasement saw Transformers on its second day of release. My first theatrical PG-13 experience, I got a thrilling rush when, prior to the screening, the trailer for the R-rated Superbad played. Woah! An R-rated movie! What a time to be alive! Sure, it was the green-band trailer and so no nudity, drug use or explicit swearing was to be found, but still, it was the trailer for what was pretty blatantly an R-rated feature film. Could it get any better than this??
Tales about the hostility of nature have existed in the spectrum of storytelling for an eternity a day, and the same goes for stories revolving around the concept of vengeance. The Revenant isn't the first motion picture to combine both concepts, and I can guarantee you it won't be the last. It does separate itself from the pack though by setting its plot in the 19th century, an era where man had come to inhabit numerous parts of America, but there was still much of the country uncharted by American individuals. This land was crawling with danger, animals ready to kill at a moments notice and Native Americans none too pleased with the concept of more white people invading on their turf.
Despite having spent all my years of my life living in Texas, the game of football just never quite grabbed my fancy. Oh, it never struck me as something bad per se, frankly, I think the fact that the overstimulating nature of the game (read: constant loud cheering occurring in unpredictable intervals) not gelling with my Asperger's Syndrome was more of a reason than anything else. But I'm well aware of the game, certain examples of its terminology and the importance it has to the lives of the majority of Americans. That final concept is one that Concussion makes sure to emphasize, as its lead character, Dr. Bennet Omalu (Will Smith) discovers that the repetitive head trauma experienced by the players of the ultimate pastime for millions of individuals is responsible for brain damage causing erratic behavior such as early suicides in those players.
