It took long enough, but it finally feels like we’ve gotten to the plot of His Dark Materials. It was partly on the fault of the series, for taking the Game of Thrones approach that unwisely split up our disparate storylines to give the impression of an epic, sprawling saga.
But for the first time, His Dark Materials feels focused toward an end goal that unites our two biggest groups of characters: Lyra and the Gyptians. It was a major misstep to separate these two storylines in the first place – the familiarity with which Lyra greets the Gyptians in the third episode of His Dark Materials, “The Spies,” feels out of step with the cushy isolation that she existed in before. But now that Lyra and the Gyptians’ storylines are united, His Dark Materials finally feels like it’s settling into itself.
Read More »
David Fincher will continue his collaboration with Netflix with a surprising new project: a Chinatown prequel series. Fincher will work with Chinatown screenwriter Robert Towne on the series, which focuses on the early days of Jake Gittes, Jack Nicholson’s private eye character from the 1974 Roman Polanski film. The deal as of now is only for a script, but Netflix reportedly hopes Fincher will direct the pilot as well.
Read More »
Which comic book movie did the President of the United States of America show to family, friends and staff? Who will be the cinematographer for Black Adam? Could we get a female version of Loki in the Disney+ series? What did Anthony & Joe Russo have to say about Martin Scorsese‘s Marvel movie comments? Has James Gunn talked to Mark Hamill about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3? All that and more in this edition of Superhero Bits. Read More »
The reboot of Charlie’s Angels from Sony Pictures crashed and burned in its opening weekend, which allowed the high octane biopic Ford v Ferrari to speed into the top spot, giving 20th Century Fox a much needed box office victory after a series of disappointments since being acquired by The Walt Disney Company. Find out how the rest of the weekend box office played out in our rundown below. Read More »
With just one month to go until Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker hits theaters, the publicity blitz for the final chapter of the Skywalker saga is really heating up. Director J.J. Abrams and the key cast members have been featured in various interviews across the web, and little details of what fans can expect from the end of the primary Star Wars saga have been coming to the surface.
Unfortunately, the late Carrie Fisher can’t be part of these proceedings. The Star Wars legend has been said to get sent off in “a really beautiful way,” and if J.J. Abrams is to be believed, the passing of Carrie Fisher didn’t have an impact on the story they would have crafted for General Leia Organa. That’s interesting, because it appears to be in direct opposition to what Colin Trevorrow said when he was still attached to direct the sequel. Read More »
Runaways, the teen-centric superhero series that’s been chugging along on Hulu since 2017, is coming to an end – but there are still ten new episodes left. Hulu just dropped the trailer for the show’s upcoming third and final season, and while much of it looks pretty dour, at least Elizabeth Hurley seems to be having an absolute blast playing the evil sorceress Morgan le Fay. Read More »
While a few original Netflix shows have received Blu-ray releases, Netflix movies tend not to get the same treatment. But that’s about to change – in a big way. Roma, the Netflix movie that scored several Oscar nominations and took home Best Foreign Language Film, is getting a Blu-ray release – and not just any old Blu-ray release, either. We’re talking The Criterion Collection here, which is about as fancy as you can get in the Blu-ray world.
Read More »
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Justice Department is moving to completely wipe out the Paramount consent decrees, a ruling which, for the past 70 years, has regulated how movie studios distribute films to movie theaters. If those decrees are indeed overturned (and it looks like they will be), it could have devastating consequences to the theater industry as we know it, and the entire movie landscape could shift as a result. Here’s what this means in practical terms.
Read More »
For his third feature in a row, writer/director Trey Edward Shults (Krisha, It Comes at Night) dives back into the subject of a family in crisis with Waves. This time around, he sets his drama in South Florida to trace the epic emotional journey of a suburban African-American family, led by Ronald (Sterling K. Brown), a well-intentioned father who puts a great deal of pressure on his high school athlete son Tyler (Kelvin Harrison Jr., from Luce, last year’s Monsters and Men, and Shults’ It Comes At Night), while tending to ignore his quiet, studious daughter Emily (newcomer Taylor Russell).
When tragedy strikes, the family—who also includes stepmom Catharine (Renée Elise Goldsberry)—has to find the strength to regroup and forgive flaws even in the darkest times they have every faced. Emily is able to find some kind of solace with the help of a new boyfriend Luke (Lucas Hedges). Waves is a sometimes uncomfortably real and emotionally raw experience, in which all of the characters find very different paths through suffering and recovery, but it’s the journey that Shults paves for his characters that makes the film such a worthy and fulfilling experience.
/Film spoke with Shults, Harrison, and Russell in Chicago recently during the Chicago International Film Festival, where they discussed the very personal events that led to the screenplay, and the ways in which the actors found their way into their very different characters, and the way Shults represented each with unique visual languages. Waves is currently in limited release, opening in top markets on November 22, and continuing to rollout throughout the holiday season.
Read More »
Cool Posts From Around the Web:
Justin Lin’s Fast & Furious 9 doesn’t hit theaters until May 2020, but if you’re dying for more stories set in the Fast universe, you won’t have to wait nearly that long to see one. Fast and Furious: Spy Racers, the new animated series from Universal and DreamWorks Animation, arrives on Netflix in just over a month, and the studio just sent out a batch of new images from the show as well as the full cast list. Check them out below, and learn who Vin Diesel’s daughter is playing in the series. Read More »
