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To say that this was a very poorly thought-out PR move from WB would be an understatement. When “Wonder Woman” was released this past June, people made it out to be the second coming. Yes, it’s miraculous that a comic book movie was made with a female director at the helm and an actress as its leading star and yet, its flaws are very present for all to see, including a third act that completely spins out of control with the usual CGI bang, that we’ve come to expect from a DCU, filled with bad shots, bad CGI and no human touch whatsoever....

2007’s misbegotten English-language debut “My Blueberry Nights” played like an uninspired greatest hits, and “The Grandmaster,” a kung-fu action epic starring Ziyi Zhang, featured astounding visuals but a convoluted and unmemorable story. Reviews of both were mixed at best and it didn’t help that even Kar-Wai’s longtime cinematographer Christopher Doyle suggested the director had been spinning his wheels and repeating himself. “You do realize that you have basically said what you needed to say, so why say more?...

The emotional and intellectually distanced creator of the whole thing, one Lin-Manuel Miranda, has been overpraised by critics and given a key to the city of Hollywood. Call it perfect timing as Miranda and “Hamilton” came at a time when Obama was President and the seeds of “wokeness” were unsubtly being perpetuated in art all over the country. Briefly, “Hamilton” is a treatment of the life of Alexander Hamilton, one of the Founding Fathers and the first secretary of the Treasury of the United States....

It’s not even just the usuals like CNN and MSNBC who are censoring this documentary, but even Fox News. The conservative news channel hasn’t mentioned “2000 Mules” a single time on the air. D’Souza is tackling a topic that, in 2022, can get someone banned by quite literally everyone. Due to high audience demand, the film is going back to 400 theatres this coming Friday. So, what’s the big deal here?...

So, please, Twiteratti wokesters, give ”Ammonite” director Francis Lee a break, he’s directed the most buzzed unseen movie of 2020. Ever since “Ammonite” was selected to be part of Cannes’ non-existent 2020 edition, there has been persistent hype surrounding Lee’s film. And yet, Lee has been holding out hope, probably praying, that “Ammonite,” starring Saoirse Ronan and Kate Winslet, will have its world premiere at a physical event. In a now-deleted tweet, Lee has expressed his frustrations with the whole matter, leading some to believe that his Oscar-buzzed film may have in the end finally been sold to a streamer....

The trailer, which I completely missed and knew nothing about, was released on Friday at 8am ET, news to me, and eclipsed the previous record-holder, of course it was “Avengers: Infinity War,” by almost 60 million views. That makes it seven Disney films on the the top 10 most viewed trailers of all time list [via IndieWire]: “Avengers: Endgame” (#1 with 289 million views), “Avengers: Infinity War” (#2 with 230 million views), “The Lion King” (#3 with 224 million views), “Avengers: Infinity War” Trailer 2 (#5 with 179 million views), “Thor: Ragnarok” (#7 with 136 million views), “Beauty and the Beast” (#8 with 127 million views), and “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (#9 with 120 million views)....

Although Hansen-Løve’s film can be seen as an homage to Ingmar Bergman, that isn’t the point of the film. If anything, this is more about Hansen-Løve than the legendary Swedish director. A meta-romance with obvious parallels to her now defunct marriage with filmmaker Olivier Assayas. Set in Fårö, which Bergman called home for close to 40 years until his death, and now a touristic attraction for cinephiles, the film kicks off with married filmmakers Chris (Vicky Krieps) and Tony (a snidely amusing Tim Roth) arriving at the remote Swedish town for a summer retreat....

“Better Call Saul” has become an indisputably great show and confirms Gilligan as one of the few visionaries that seems to have decided to concentrate the thick of his career on a central world in his storytelling. With all that being said, Giancarlo Esposito, who plays Gus Fring on ‘Saul,’ says that the end is near for the show. “It’s tricky with [co-creator Vince Gilligan],” Esposito told Collider. “If you look at the “Breaking Bad” model, he said five years, five seasons, but it was really five and six” with the split final season....

This love story between two cannibals traveling the mid-west has Guadagnino re-teaming with his writer David Kajganich (Suspiria) and with very mixed results. Starring Taylor Russell as Maren, a fine young cannibal, she travels the country in search of answers about her parents, and meets Lee (Timothée Chalamet) a fellow flesh eater who himself seems to be on the run. Why? We’re never really sure and, sadly, although Guadagnino bets his stakes on it, we don’t really care....

Emma Stone, always great, plays the Dalmatian hater. In a 20-minute prologue we see Stella (later to be Cruella) witnessing her mom’s death after the spotted dogs ransack her down a river. Years later, she’s a street thief with a passion and talent for fashion designing. With the help of both luck and ingenuity, Stella eventually lands her dream job as a designer for London’s Baroness (a deliciously wicked Emma Thompson)....

And so, if this “adaptation” of Claremont/Byrne/Austin’s “The Dark Phoenix Saga,” which, oddly enough, was also used by Brett Ratner in ‘Last Stand,’ is very faithful to the comics, its execution is rather tepid. Concentrating the core of its action on Jean Grey, Kingberg’s movie starts off in 1975, as a young Grey sits in the backseat of her parents’ car and, much like in “Shazam!,” has her, as-of-then, unbeknownst powers causing a fatal accident....

“Decision to Leave” has leaked online, probably due to its VOD release in South Korea. It will screen at TIFF and NYFF in September. The film is a purposely convoluted detective noir that probably benefits from multiple viewings. Park uses bizarre zoom ins, POV shots, and character’s recreating crimes in their mind and being shown in the action (even though they weren’t part of it). The amount of critics that I know who fell asleep or left during the Park is ridiculously high....

I was very much looking forward to director Adrian Lyne’s adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel ‘“Deep Water,” starring Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas. The novel follws “a young married couple as their mind game with each other take a dark turn when bodies begin piling up. The couple avoids divorce by allowing each other to take on new lovers.” Sounds about right. No doubt, the filmmaker most associated with the erotic thriller genre was Lyne....

Of course, we all knew that “Bohemian Rhapsody” would just kick-start a whirlwind of Hollywood rock biopics. Newcomer Austin Butler plays Elvis Presley. Tom Hanks stars as his manager Colonel Tom Parker. The film has a script by “Fifty Shades of Grey” scribe Kelly Marcel. I just got this hunch the film will cover his entire life, including his death. There’s a shot in this teaser of the comeback special stage, circa 1968....

The movie, which has Chris Hemsworth dodging bullets left and right for most of its 117-minute runtime, is relentless in its insistence to never bore you with, God forbid, character development. Check your brain at the door with this one. The feature directing debut of Sam Hargrave, best known as the stunt coordinator and primary stunt double on “Captain America: Civil War” and “Avengers: Endgame,” is meant to give us nonstop thrills, but I eventually succumbed to numbness by the midway mark....

With a 51% drop and a domestic total of $25.4M and an international haul of $60.8M, which included debuts in the likes of Italy and France, the ninth film in the ‘Fast and Furious’ franchise now sits at a healthy $332M worldwide. And Universal will wait eagerly as the film still has to open in China, a market in which the films eighth entry ‘The Fate of the Furious’ raked in over $350M....

This White House screening is also noteworthy because of the controversy surrounding “Joker” and how the media painted it as an alt-right manifesto which could spark incels yada, yada, yada .. you know the drill with the far-left these days. Anything that may speak the truth about the current times we live in must be disavowed and, hell, even, censored. The notion that we cannot watch something because it doesn’t adhere to far-left ideology is absurd....

Phillips’ Joaquin Phoenix-starring origin picture hasn’t even been released yet, let alone had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, but, by the sounds of it, Phillips is so convinced that he’s hit a homerun with “Joker” that he’s not ruling out a sequel. Speaking with Total Film, Phillips actually sounds pretty keen on the idea of “Joker 2”: As mentioned, the fact that Phillips isn’t even opposed to the idea of a second Joker seems rather odd, considering how “Joker” has been depicted as an anti-comic book movie by almost everyone involved in production....

“The King’s Man” is set to follow one man, who intends on stopping history’s worst criminals who gather to wipe out millions of people (sounds familiar to the previous two films). But sure enough, Vaughn has thought of a different way of dealing with a similar storyline to what he has done, why try and fix something that isn’t broken.” [via The Playlist] The film will star the likes of Ralph Fiennes, Harris Dickinson (“Silent Witness”), Daniel Brühl (“Rush”), Charles Dance (“Game of Thrones”), Rhys Ifans (“The Boat That Rocked”), Matthew Goode (“The Imitation Game”), Gemma Arterton, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Charles Dance, Tom Hollander, Djimon Hounsou, and Stanley Tucci....

The film’s success will reside into whether or not we can fundamentally buy Charlize Theron falling for Seth Rogen. In real life, Theron is only six years older than Rogen, but she’s still Charlize Theron, hotness personified, the dreamy woman of my dreams, and he’s still Seth effin’ Rogen, not to diss him in any way, but what are the chances this kind of romance could actually happen? I look forward to seeing “Long Shot,” which is scheduled to arrive in theaters on May 3....