Movie Reviews and Previews Oscar Isaac takes on the video game curse Oscar Isaac is the latest A-lister to take the video game challenge and try to make a video game adaptation that doesn’t suck. Slowly but surely, Hollywood seems to be figuring video games out—Tomb Raider didn’t completely suck—but they still remain tougher to adapt than you’ By Sarah • Dec 07, 2020 01:44 pm
Maple Leaf Wonder Woman stress Lainey emailed me this morning about being “stressed” about how she is going to watch Wonder Woman 1984 later this month. For Canada, the stress is real. With no HBO Max and not ideal circumstances for going to movie theaters right now, how to see WW84 is a stressful situation. By Sarah • Dec 07, 2020 01:10 pm
Equality Issues Hawkeye brings Echo, a deaf Native superhero, to the MCU As we previously discussed, the real reason to care about the Hawkeye-centric Disney+ series is not because of Jeremy Renner, but because of Kate Bishop. Now we have another reason to mildly anticipate Hawkeye, and it’s still not because of Jeremy Renner, but because of actress Alaqua Cox, a By Sarah • Dec 04, 2020 01:47 pm
Game of Thrones Our first look at the new Game of Thrones dragons Game of Thrones-ish, that is. The prequel spinoff of Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, is set to begin production in 2021. To whet our appetites—and rinse out the bad taste left in many mouths by the GOT finale—HBO tweeted the one thing they know will get By Sarah • Dec 04, 2020 11:17 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Warner Brothers Drops a Bombshell Yesterday, Warner Brothers dropped the absolutely gobsmacking news that in 2021 they will release ALL of their movies day-and-date with streaming and theatrical. That’s right, ALL of their 2021 movies will drop on HBO Max the same day they open in theaters, including Judas and the Black Messiah, King By Sarah • Dec 04, 2020 10:10 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Riz Ahmed in Sound of Metal A heavy metal drummer with four years of sobriety under his belt, Ruben (Riz Ahmed) is doing pretty okay. He and his girlfriend, Lou (Olivia Cooke), form a duo called Blackgammon and they live in their vintage Airstream, driving to gigs and rocking out. Until, that is, Ruben’s hearing By Sarah • Dec 03, 2020 11:40 am
TV Updates Hailee Steinfeld is the good Hawkeye One of my biggest disappointments with the MCU is Hawkeye. It started out promising—back in 2010, Jeremy Renner was one of the new rising stars, hot off The Hurt Locker, and his cameo in Thor seemed to nail the tone of the wise-cracking ace archer, Clint Barton. But then By Sarah • Dec 03, 2020 10:23 am
Business of Hollywood Charlize Theron’s power moves Earlier this year we discussed Charlize Theron’s rise as a power producer, and now she is making power moves, setting up a production deal with HBO and HBO Max. Through her Denver and Delilah banner, Theron will produce film and television projects for HBO/Max, along with her co-producers By Sarah • Dec 02, 2020 02:51 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Benedict Cumberbatch’s singularly awful accent A trailer dropped yesterday, and I cannot stop thinking about it. The Mauritanian is about Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who was accused of being the chief recruiter for 9/11 and held in Guantanamo Bay for years without charges being filed. Ultimately, his case went to court, where many of the By Sarah • Dec 02, 2020 11:28 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Armie Hammer and the horse head Today in But Why news, it has been reported that Armie Hammer will star in a limited series called The Offer, about the making of The Godfather. This is not to be confused with Francis and The Godfather, a movie which will star Oscar Isaac and Jake Gyllenhaal and is By Sarah • Dec 02, 2020 10:09 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Small Axe: Lovers Rock seethes with life and passion Mangrove, the first entry into Steve McQueen’s film anthology series Small Axe, is a historical courtroom drama that is vital in a year of social demonstration and change. The second film in Small Axe, Lovers Rock, is in many ways a step back from Mangrove, not in quality but By Sarah • Nov 30, 2020 01:03 pm
TV Updates The Jedi arrives on The Mandalorian One of the big expectations for The Mandalorian season two was the arrival of Ahsoka Tano, a popular character from the animated series The Clone Wars. Well, that event transpired on Friday in the latest episode of The Mandalorian, “The Jedi”, as Ahsoka Tano shows up, dual white lightsabers in By Sarah • Nov 30, 2020 11:39 am
Top Reads Joss Whedon’s surprise exits Hello, it is I, your resident American correspondent, corresponding to you from America, on America’s second-greatest holiday: Thanksgiving, the day we stuff our faces with turkey so we don’t have to talk to each other. (The best holiday is July 4, because fireworks.) In honor of my homeland’ By Sarah • Nov 26, 2020 11:42 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Happiest Season: The Cute Christmas Rom-Com of 2020 I will be accepting no other applications, Happiest Season is THE cute Christmas rom-com of 2020. It has all the classic Christmas movie cliches: someone hanging off a gutter (is it EVEN a Christmas movie if no one is hanging off a gutter?); brawls on Christmas Eve; obligatory trip to By Sarah • Nov 24, 2020 11:49 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Small Axe: Mangrove is vital viewing in 2020 Steve McQueen’s latest project is a series of five films collected as an anthology detailing experiences from the “Windrush generation” of immigrants from the Caribbean who came to Britain to help fulfill post-war labor shortages in the mid-twentieth century. (These are films labelled as “episodes”, so have fun figuring By Sarah • Nov 23, 2020 03:01 pm
TV Updates Crown Freeze: The Queen and Thatcher’s three frostiest glares This season of The Crown really brings the bitchiness to the front, roasting everyone left and right, but while the burns are hot, the queen is ice cold. The Crown has always spent time on the relationship between Queen Elizabeth and her prime ministers, but for the first time, her By Sarah • Nov 20, 2020 03:39 pm
