Movie Reviews and Previews Ava DuVernay is already moving on It was everyone’s low-key worry, right? That after A Wrinkle in Time merely whelmed, Ava DuVernay would not get the same second (third, fourth, fifth) chance that her white male peers get to go on and make another blockbuster, like, say, Zack Snyder who made a divisive Superman movie By Sarah • Mar 16, 2018 03:21 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Avengers mount up A new trailer—the last one?—for Avengers: Infinity War has been released, and yeah, okay, this one is working for me. I haven’t been 100% sold on the Super Big Important Tone of previous trailers, and I’m starting to get seriously irritated with Tony Stark, but this By Sarah • Mar 16, 2018 10:22 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Apathetic Bond After approximately 97 years of waffling, the 25th Bond movie is a go. It’s slated for November 2019, Daniel Craig is returning—presumably with his own Scrooge McDuck vault of gold since he said if he did another Bond it would “only be for the money”— and now Danny By Sarah • Mar 16, 2018 10:11 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Tomb Raider doesn’t suck Tomb Raider wants to be Indiana Jones but ends up more The Mummy (the good Rachel Weisz one, not the dumb Tom Cruise one). That’s not an insult—The Mummy is a good f*cking adventure movie. But The Mummy also doesn’t take itself seriously, and you can By Sarah • Mar 15, 2018 09:46 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Very Little Johnny Depp The first trailer for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald has been released and it, unlike JK Rowling, would like to pretend like Johnny Depp is not in the movie. (I am not inclined to cut anyone associated with this movie slack because A. they could have recast him between By Sarah • Mar 14, 2018 03:57 pm
Business of Hollywood Matt and Ben join the inclusion club I guess better late than never. The first person to publicly respond to Frances McDormand’s call for the inclusion rider was Michael B. Jordan. Next to the party are Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, through their Pearl Street production shingle. Okay. Fine. If they want to be productive allies By Sarah • Mar 13, 2018 03:14 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Jared Leto Emo Yakuza Movie The last time I reviewed a movie for which the description sounds like a random Scrabble result, it was the whimsically insane Michael Shannon Christmas Bigfoot Movie. That movie is a gift from another dimension. The Jared Leto Emo Yakuza Movie, on the other hand, is some kind of punishment, By Sarah • Mar 13, 2018 10:57 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Charlize Theron and David Oyelowo in Gringo The advertising for Gringo is somewhat misleading, so realign your expectations now—this is not an R-rated weed comedy a la Pineapple Express. No, Gringo is more like a Coen Brothers movie in which a pot pill is the Macguffin. In fact, pot is so unimportant, beyond being a plot By Sarah • Mar 09, 2018 02:46 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Grinch Cumberbatch Everyone loves How the Grinch Stole Christmas, both the original Dr. Seuss book, and the 1966 animated Christmas special that re-runs every year on television. Everyone knows the song, and everyone recognizes the Grinch’s sneering green face, which is why Hollywood will insist on trying to recreate that 1966 By Sarah • Mar 09, 2018 10:10 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Ava DuVernay’s A Wrinkle in Time A Wrinkle in Time is an ambitious movie and its scope outstrips its narrative ability, resulting in an uneven but occasionally enthralling fantasy. Meg (Storm Reid, terrific) is introduced helping her father, Alex Murry (Chris Pine, terrific) in his lab. He’s doing an experiment with sand and frequencies, and By Sarah • Mar 08, 2018 03:12 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Chris Hemsworth reporting for duty Here are some photos of Chris Hemsworth at the airport in Vancouver, returning to work on Bad Times at the El Royal. That’s the movie I name-checked previously as an interesting project Hemsworth is working on, reuniting with his Cabin in the Woods director, Drew Goddard. I can’t By Sarah • Mar 08, 2018 02:14 pm
Equality Issues MOST BAE Jordan I can only assume Kathleen has fallen down a well and is incapacitated at the moment because Lainey assigned me a Michael B. Jordan story in which her Forever Bae MBJ is being the MOST BAE. Remember Frances McDormand’s Oscar speech in which she shouted out inclusion riders and By Sarah • Mar 08, 2018 11:01 am
TV Updates Silicon Valley has a gender problem and no one misses TJ Miller That’s the takeaway from The Hollywood Reporter’s cover profile of Silicon Valley, ahead of the show’s fifth season launch. TJ Miller, of course, got caught up in Hollywood’s sex pest infestation, but that’s not why he left Silicon Valley. According to Miller, he left as By Sarah • Mar 08, 2018 09:52 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Jennifer Lawrence in Red Sparrow Red Sparrow is an adaptation based on a book by Jason Matthews, a former CIA agent, that features a Russian ballerina, Dominika Egorova, pushed into espionage after a career-ending injury. (Dominika’s story is quite similar to Natasha Romanov’s backstory in the Marvel comics, but that’s a different By Sarah • Mar 06, 2018 01:27 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Bruce Willis in Death Wish Death Wish began life as a pulpy crime novel, then came a film adaptation in 1974 starring Charles Bronson. That movie borrows from the exploitation sub-genres that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s, but where exploitation cinema largely arose from marginalized communities creating their own narratives outside a system By Sarah • Mar 02, 2018 03:09 pm
TV Updates Wakanda represent Chadwick Boseman and Lupita Nyong’o are both presenting at the Oscars on Sunday. No idea if they’re presenting together, but they’re both riding the Black Panther high—and it will be the dominant film again on Oscar weekend which, if Get Out were to pull off some By Sarah • Mar 02, 2018 11:49 am
