Posts

Last night’s PGA Awards sealed the deal for me — “1917” will win Best Picture come February 3rd. Yes, Mendes’ film won the coveted Best Film prize last night. To put it into context more pronouncedly, 68% of all past Best Picture winners have won the PGA Best Film award, on their way to Oscar glory, that’s a hell of a stat to ignore. And yet, despite 10 nominations overall, the WWI thriller has been nominated in only two of the major Oscar categories: Directing and Original Screenplay....

AMC’s statement reads: Of all the activities to do when the economy is re-opened, moviegoing, sadly, isn’t one of them. Does AMC plan on seating 1/10th of the theatre? Accounting for 2 meters distance in all directions? I just can’t see a movie theater being welcomed with open arms early on in the post-COVID world. We still have no vaccine and accidentally touching that cup holder that was touched by dirty hands the screening before?...

Is it still over 3-hours long? The film is officially in the can. There’s no reason for Paramount to skip the fall festivals, but they just might be doing that. A real shame, if you ask me. Meanwhile, Sarah Holme over at Iconic Editorial has seen “Babylon” and describes it as “an epic masterpiece that needs [time] to breathe” in reference to its lengthy runtime, which is reported to be 3 hours long....

Directed by Cory Finley (“Thoroughbreds”) from a screenplay written by Mike Makowsky, who was a student when the Roslyn School District drama occurred in the mid-aughts, “Bad Education” is a darkly hilarious take on the most egregious and lucrative financial crime in the history of the US school system. Long Island school superintendent Frank Tassone (Hugh Jackman) dedicated his career to giving the Roslyn School District its prestige. With each passing year, Roslyn’s record number of graduating seniors were being accepted to the very best Ivy League colleges in the country....

Today’s Orion Pictures released a new trailer and announced, right before its big digital Comic-Con showing on Saturday, that “Bill & Ted 3” is now coming out September 1 on VOD and in select theaters (drive-ins and theaters that are actually open). Directed this time by Dean Parisot (“Galaxy Quest,” “Red 2”), and written by the duo of Ed Solomon (“Men In Black”) and Chris Matheson (“Mom and Dad Save the World”), ‘Face The Music’ has Bill and Ted having to deal with their daughters, who have to help their middle-aged dads write a new song to save the universe....

Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

“Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” currently has a 68 on Metacritic, based on 28 reviews. That’s just not good enough. However, a 85% on Rotten Tomatoes definitely paints a rosier outlook However, the first film garnered an 88 on Metacritic, so this is easily a step down. Quite honestly, I’m the wrong person to get an opinion about this movie, but I found the first half, at times, engrossing, but the second half is just a mess....

Of note: I will admit that my A- review from Sundance (below) should probably now, after further reflection, be lowered to a B+. Here’s the concluding paragraph of my Sundance review dated 1.29.19: “This is easily Chadha’s best movie since “Bend it Like Beckham,” taps into a similar rousing spirit and is destined to become a huge hit that crosses generational and cultural lines—not unlike the way Springsteen’s music lifted up a Pakistani teenager in the 1980s thousands of miles away in Great Britain....

The A24 film had been involved in an ad nauseum amount of reshoots, not to mention production and release delays. A brief test-screening last year didn’t go well for the movie. It was originally called “Red, White and Blue,” I could go on and on … However, word of mouth has changed a bit these last few weeks, with some who’ve seen it singling out Brian Tyree Henry’s supporting performance as Oscar-worthy....

“It is like fishing, where you leave it out there,” says Knight. “And it’s been out there for a while. It went through permutations in the sense of, how do you follow Viggo? We’ve been through that and we’ve moved on and now we’re in a position where I will say ‘watch this space,’ we’re close to getting into production.” It would appear that the Cronenberg will not return. In addition, the sequel include Mortensen, but he won’t be the lead, a “major actor” is being sought to take the lead....

“The first thing that you notice about Anna Biller’s “The Love Witch” is how strikingly beautiful a movie it is. Shot on 35mm its look is inspired by 1960s sexploitation and Technicolor melodramas. It is sumptuous in its eye-popping photography filled with relentless color and incredibly impressive and precise costume design.” “Biller explores female fantasy in the most diabolical of ways imaginable and gender politics are dissected in such an honest, but stinging way that it could infuriate some feminists with its truthful observations....

Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

The former is saying that there isn’t any firm confirmation that Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is not a 2022 release, while the latter is sticking by his Variety article that alluded to the fact that the Scorsese epic had been moved to 2023 (Apple and Paramount did not comment). Last I checked, they were still aiming for a December 2022 release, but giving Scorsese and longtime editor Thelma Schoonmaker all the time in the world to finish the film....

Marcus Reginald Green’s film just won Audience Award number six, this time at the Denver Film Festival. Its other festival audience wins have occurred at Miami, Chicago, Philadelphia, Indianapolis and Chapel Hill. As mentioned last week, Kenneth Branagh’s “Belfast” has only won 3 audience awards thus far in its Festival run. Five of the six festivals where “King Richard” won audience awards, “Belfast” was also playing there and either finished in second or third place in the vote tally … We all know what would have happened if “King Richard” had actually played TIFF, “Belfast” would have never won the People’s Choice Award....

Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

The issue I have with this adaptation is that despite a runtime of 150 or so minutes, you do feel as though director Xavier Giannoli is trying to cram too much into his movie. At the center of his epic is Lucien de Rubempré (Benjamin Voisin), a wannabe young poet from the French country who moves to Paris to pursue a career in writing only to stumble his way into becoming a renowned “journalist....

More to come … Contribute Hire me Advertise Donate Team Contact Privacy Policy

Formerly known as CBS All Access, Paramount+ is set to launch on March 4th. Subscribers will be able to access tens of thousands of episodes from CBS, BET, Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon & Smithsonian Channel, as well as hundreds of iconic movies from Paramount Pictures. However, by the summer, Variety is reporting that the streaming wars will be shaken with Paramount+ set to add thousands of movie titles to its library: “Upwards of 2,500 movie titles [will be] available to subscribers....

On Rotten Tomatoes, with 84 reviews already in, the movie is at 18% rotten. On Metacritic, the film currently has a tepid 36 MC score. This bodes terribly for Sony, who invested more than $100 million, including extensive reshoots, on “Morbius.” Rolling Stone’s David Fear asks, “Is Morbius the worst Marvel movie ever made? In an alternate universe without The New Mutants, the answer would likely be yes ”...

If you’ve seen the US “Nope” ads, even before it screened for most critics, you would notice The Wrap being quoted as saying it’s “The Best Movie of the Year.” Duralde reviewed the film, published a negative review and is now wondering who in his staff actually said that: Funny. That ad blurb has actually been circulating since Monday. It contributed and even raised anticipation for Peele’s film. This was surely a mistake on the part of the “Nope” marketing team?...