Immortality Leads To Solid Action Filmmaking in The Old Guard

The Old Guard begins with death. The lifeless and bullet-hole ridden face of Andy (Charlize Theron) lying on the ground. Voice-over narration from Andy indicates that this isn't the first time she's been confronted with death. In fact, it's something she's so familiar with that she's become sick of it. Death would become a familiar face to you too if, like Andy, you were an immortal warrior. Andy and her companions Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts), Joe (Marwan Kenzari) and Nicky (Luca Marinelli) are all individuals with extraordinary healing powers that have lived for centuries. They've fought in all the great historical wars in an effort to make the world a better place.

Bombshell Lets Down Essential Perspectives With A Poor Movie

Based on the true stories regarding sexual harassment and sexual assault cases at Fox News, Bombshell chronicles a trio of individual stories each centered on a different woman (two of them being actual people, one of them being a fictional creation) working for Fox News, in-film narrator Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), Gretchen Carlson (Nicole Kidman) and newbie employee Kayla Pospisil (Margot Robbie). Bombshell explores the work environment they reside in as well as the gradually increasing presence of a sexual harassment lawsuit (one spurred on by Gretchen Carlson) brewing against the network and its founder, Roger Ailes (John Lithgow).

Long Shot Is More Agreeable Than Memorable But At Least It's Frequently Funny

Though they usually have enough gross-out gags to fill out an army of Seann William Scott starring vehicles, comedic vehicles for Seth Rogen and his fellow cohorts like Judd Apatow have always had a penchant for treating romantic subplots with surprising levels of seriousness. Starting with The 40-Year-Old Virgin back in 2005, these types of films seemed to make a promise to viewers to keep the jokes about male genitalia coming at a steady rate but also to treat romance as something with actual weight and heart. Trying to balance raunch with heart has had varying degrees of success, but it is an element that separates it from, say, Happy Madison or recent Will Ferrell vehicles where heartfelt moments feel obligatory rather than affecting.

An Assortment of Talented Actors Can't Save Gringo From It's Messy Script

Gringo is trying to be something different. Writers Anthony Tambakis & Matthew Stone and first-time feature film director Nash Edgerton clearly want Gringo to be a dark comedy occasionally interrupted by brief bits of action that has a glib view of the morality of the rich and powerful and has a sad-sack everyman protagonist that Jimmy Stewart would have played once upon a time. That's an unorthodox mixture of elements to put into one movie and that audacious spirit is to be admired. But in executing such a unique concoction, Gringo, unfortunately, winds up as a misfire, commendable artistic intentions can't mitigate the tiresome scattered nature of this project. 

Charlize Theron, Mackenzie Davis And Some Skillful Diablo Cody Writing Are The Champions of Tully

Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody reunite once again, following their collaborations on Juno and Young Adult, for Tully, a new meditation on motherhood that also brings back the star of the duo's aforementioned project Young Adult, Charlize Theron. Theron gets the chance to play a wildly different character in Tully than the one she portrayed in Young Adult, with her character in Tully being Marlo, a woman who has two children and one more on the way and is feeling...unfulfilled. Life's not awful, she and her husband, Drew (Ron Livingston) get along fine, money's not even too much an issue, but there does seem to be an endless succession of mundane problems every day that she feels like she can never properly address.

Atomic Blonde Is Frequently Entertaining But It Gets Too Bogged Down In Its Own Plot

In order to make the new action/thriller Atomic Blonde as awesome as potentially possible, it looks like the producers of this project swung for the fences and got two of the most influential figures of the mid-2010's American cinema action scene. David Leitch, one of the two directors of John Wick and one of the fight choreographers for the Captain America sequels (Chad Stahleski joined him on both of those duties), whose helped create a fresh modern-day style of cogently filmed and intense hand-to-hand combat, is helming this motion picture while his leading actor of the piece is Charlize Theron, star of one of the most iconic films of this decade in any genre, Mad Max: Fury Road. Alas, them working together doesn't result in a movie anywhere near as good as their best movies, though that doesn't mean Atomic Blonde doesn't have its own action-packed pleasures.

The Monstrous And Gruesome Effects Of The Cycle Of Abuse Are On Display In The Riveting And Unsettling Monster

Charlize Theron is talented in an abundance of ways but she’s particularly adept at portraying damaged individuals. She’s gone down that route a number of times in her career and whenever she does, she makes sure she’s not repeating herself, she’s examining different facets of a damaged human being. Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road, for instance, is a whole different kind of damaged human being, one who has just much physical trauma in her past as she has mental trauma but she has an unfailing determination to her that motivates her sole purpose in life: to help others that are being abused by the ones who had committed awful atrocities to her.

The Fate Of The Furious Takes The Car-Filled Franchise To So-So Territory

Out of the seven Fast & Furious movies that have come before The Fate Of The Furious, I've seen all but two of them, the sole exceptions being 2 Fast 2 Furious and The Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift. Otherwise though, I've been able to see the other five entries in this saga and now I've also been privy to The Fate Of The Furious, the eighth installment in the greatest car racing spy heist action franchise in history behind The Apu Trilogy. After three gloriously unhinged action movies in a row, it pains me to say that The Fate Of The Furious goes to more routine and repetitive areas that harken back to the middling first and fourth movies in the series.

Kubo And The Two Strings Is A Majestic And Beautiful Adventure

Boy, if you're a movie loving youngster right now, or someone that just likes good cinema, you've basically hit the jackpot this month. Each of the first three weeks of this month have managed to deliver a noteworthy family film that's managed to not treat younger audiences like morons and has decided that families deserve strong storytelling too. The presence of such films makes the existence of Nine Lives (which was also released this month) somewhat more tolerable, I guess. The newest motion picture in this trend of high-quality August 2016 family movies is Kubo And The Two Strings which also happens to be the newest film from animation studio LAIKA, the place where Coraline and ParaNorman originated.

The Huntsman: Winter's War Review

Despite what the television advertisements and trailers have told you (to the point that the majority of the marketing materials have a voice-over declaring that this is "The story before Snow White"), The Huntsman: Winter's War is not entirely a prequel to the profitable but mostly forgotten 2012 feature Snow White & The Huntsman. Now, it's first act is indeed set prior to that original movie, but that's mostly an extended prologue to the film proper. The part of the story that is indeed "the story before Snow White" mostly concerns itself with establishing that The Evil Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) from the first movie had a sister, Freya (Emily Blunt), who was a normal individual until her infant child was murdered by the offspring's father.

Chill Out (I'm So Sorry For That Pun) With The First Trailer For The Huntsman: Winter's War

I didn't really care all that much for Snow White And The Huntsman, a forgettable feature that I freely admit wasn't a torturous experience, but was certainly a cookie-cutter experience that wasted the talents of its two lead actors (Kristen Stewart and Chris Hemsworth), with only Charlize Theron getting to go hog-wild as a scenery chewing bad guy. Normally, a sequel wouldn't be anywhere near my radar, but this follow-up, entitled The Huntsman: Winter's War, has made a number of smart decisions to get my interest.

Young Adult Review (Classic Write-Up)

"Money can't buy happiness" as that old saying goes, and Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron) could not be a better example of this phrase. She isn't at a Bill Gates-level of financial prosperity, but she's got her own book series going on and she was quite popular in high school. Yet, she feels emptiness inside, which she tries to combat by projecting a "holier-than-thou" attitude on all that cross her path. In order to further outrun her inner despair, Mavis is returning to her hometown to reconnect with an old flame, Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson), who she's convinced is her soulmate. The only problem; Buddy is happily married with a kid. This is the sort of thing Mavis considers to be merely a bump in the road to her inevitable happiness.

Five Actresses Who Would Be Great Choices To Play Captain Marvel

A large number of new superheroes will be introduced into the Marvel Cinematic Universe over the next years, and interestingly, most of them have already been cast. Benedict Cumberbatch will play Doctor Strange, Chadwick Boseman will bring Black Panther to life and Tom Holland will be the MCU version of Spider-Man. But one notable hero is left to cast; Captain Marvel. This character has been one that many have been clamoring for to receive a motion picture, and with such a film arriving in 2018, I thought it might be interesting to look at five actresses who would do the character justice!

Mad Max: Fury Road Review

It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad Max World

Let me start out this review by saying one simple phrase: George Miller, Happy Feet Two is totally forgiven and then some. His directorial followup to that 2011 feature (and in fact only his third film he's directed in the 21st century) returns him to the franchise that made him a household name. Sometimes, returning to old cinematic stomping grounds reaps lackluster results (namely in regards to the ambitious but underwhelming fourth season of Arrested Development), but Millers doesn't stumble telling another Mad Max tale, instead soaring with one of the best action films in ages.

Things Get Madly Awesome In New Mad Max: Fury Road Trailer

It's been nearly three years since Max Max: Fury Road started filming, but the film is almost ready to arrive to movie theaters everywhere. Seven weeks are left until the feature graces our eyeballs, and I for one can't wait any longer. The newest trailer for the movie has arrived and you can watch it below, and I seriously urge you to watch this bad boy in 1080 picture quality. You'll thank me later.

Snow White & The Huntsman Prequel Adds Emily Blunt & Jessica Chastain, Toys With My Emotions

I've always found the 2016 feature The Huntsman, a prequel to 2012's Snow White & The Huntsman, to be a peculiar project. I didn't hate the aforementioned fantasy film from three years back, and it did make almost $400 million worldwide, but I didn't feel like it had that much of a fanbase to warrant a continuation. Apparently, it has, with the project being developed for several years now and finally being released next year, specifically on April 22, 2016.

A Million Ways To Die In The West Review

Frontier Follies Find Fairly Average  Venture

Seth Macfarlane comedy adheres to two different principles; turning the mundane into its most exaggerated form, or taking something zany and bringing it down to Earth. The latter was brought to terrific life in Ted, while the former coheres the humor in A Million Ways To Die In The West. The film takes all the cliches of both western movies and actual frontier life and ratchets them up to their most violent and sexual extremes. For some comedians, this movie would be stepping out of their comfort zones in a big way, while for Macfarlane it feels disappointing he couldn't conjure up something more memorable right on the heels of Ted.