Movie Reviews and Previews Taika Waititi’s Hunt for the Wilderpeople Sometimes you go into a movie with fairly high expectations, and based on previous work, you feel pretty good about those expectations being met. And sometimes, even expecting something good, your expectations are blown out of the water and you walk away from something great. Such is the case with By Sarah • Jul 12, 2016 12:36 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Louis CK and Jenny Slate in The Secret Life of Pets Louis CK is not an obvious choice to headline an animated children’s film in the Toy Story mold about what our pets do all day while we’re not home. But his is the leading voice in The Secret Life of Pets, in which he portrays Max, a little By Sarah • Jul 08, 2016 10:46 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Matthew McConaughey in Free State of Jones A Confederate soldier, played by Matthew McConaughey with a scraggly History Beard, navigates a Civil War battlefield. He’s a medic, more interested in alleviating whatever suffering he can than inflicting it on anyone else, and he’s dazed by the sheer scale of pain and misery surrounding him. War By Sarah • Jul 07, 2016 04:05 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews The Woody Allen Cycle continues Woody Allen makes a movie every year—he’s got Café Society coming out later this month, and a movie due in 2017. There are no details about that movie yet, but Kate Winslet will star, along with Jim Belushi, and The Hollywood Reporter says that Juno Temple and Justin By Sarah • Jul 07, 2016 01:55 pm
The new Iron (Wo)Man Marvel Comics is in the middle of another crossover event, Civil War II. The original Civil War happened almost entirely within the niche corner of comic books and their readers—the only thing that got out to the wider cultural landscape was the assassination of Captain America. But this time, By Sarah • Jul 06, 2016 12:51 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Idris Elba hot in leather Idris Elba has been filming The Dark Tower in New York City, so here are some photos of Elba all decked out as a fantasy Western gunslinger. Back when I wrote about his casting, I said that “at the very, very least, he’ll look f*cking badass” in costume. By Sarah • Jul 05, 2016 02:26 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Blake Lively in The Shallows Here’s something I did not expect to say: The Shallows is pretty good. I know, right? I was surprised I like it, too. But The Shallows, aka Blake Lively vs. A Shark, is a solid B-movie. It’s effectively scary and sort of stylish, and Blake Lively isn’t By Sarah • Jul 04, 2016 12:05 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart belong together Central Intelligence is a perfectly serviceable, middle of the road comedy. It’s not bad, it’s not great. It’s okay. It has some good laughs, but they’re a little fewer and further in between than the filmmakers would have liked, I’m sure. (It has three credited By Sarah • Jun 30, 2016 01:06 pm
America Ferrera Oscar: The New Class Yesterday the list of the 2016 class of invitees to join the Academy was released, and it shows follow-through on their promise, after back-to-back years of #OscarsSoWhite controversy, to double membership diversity by 2020. This year they invited an unprecedented 683 members—about ten percent of the pre-existing membership. Recent By Sarah • Jun 30, 2016 09:57 am
Game of Thrones Wrapping up Game of Thrones We’re done with Westeros for another year, and all that’s left is to pick over the bones of the season that was. Mostly this means trying to figure out what Jon Snow’s Targaryen name is—Lyanna Stark definitely said it to Young Ned, but it’s impossible By Sarah • Jun 29, 2016 12:52 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Jeff Goldblum in Independence Day: Resurgence I’m not going to sit here and pretend like Independence Day is some great movie—it’s not. It’s nonsensical trash like all of Roland Emmerich’s movies. But it is at least fun nonsensical trash, arguably the only Emmerich movie that is in any way actually enjoyable. By Sarah • Jun 28, 2016 01:41 pm
Seth Meyers Comedy in our annus horribilis 2016 is, without doubt, an annus horribilis, a worldwide sh*tstorm that is starting to feel suspiciously like the first chapter in a dystopia novel. 2016 is the real-life equivalent of a Hieronymous Bosch painting—this detail of a bird-monster sh*tting bubble people while it eats a person that By Sarah • Jun 28, 2016 11:12 am
Game of Thrones Game of Thrones 6.10: Winter is here, and so are the women Game of Thrones Season 6, Episode 10 recap SPOILERS This season has seen women seize power across Westeros, and in the finale, Cersei herself takes the Iron Throne. It cost her everything to achieve, but in the end, she is in charge once again. The writers hinted all season at By Sarah • Jun 27, 2016 09:34 am
Movie Reviews and Previews Elle Fanning in The Neon Demon Nicolas Winding Refn is a filmmaker who lives on the line between art and trash, and his new film, The Neon Demon, is built firmly on that line. A horror movie in the giallo tradition, The Neon Demon is equal parts art film and B-movie schlock, with the dreamlike underpinnings By Sarah • Jun 24, 2016 01:57 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Ewan McGregor’s Pastoral passion The first trailer for Ewan McGregor’s adaptation of American Pastoral is here, giving us our first look at the film McGregor heroically rescued by deciding to just direct the damn thing himself. It actually doesn’t look that bad. There’s some really nice imagery in the trailer, and By Sarah • Jun 24, 2016 12:47 pm
Movie Reviews and Previews Colin Firth and Jude Law in Genius The first hurdle to clear with Genius, the feature film debut of English theater director Michael Grandage, is that everyone is played by Brits and Aussies, and by “everyone” I mean some of the most towering figures of American literature. You cast the best actor for the role and a By Sarah • Jun 23, 2016 01:22 pm
