If it seems like I’m getting ahead of myself, rest assured “Stranger Things” Season 4 starts with an infuriating custom of our current TV age: an in media res intro. The first eight minutes, which have been available online for days, are technically a flashback, but they serve the same function as all the other openers that start in the middle of a story rather than, you know, at the beginning....
The first look at Nintendo, Universal, and Illumination’s animated feature film “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” stars Pratt as the viral video-game lead Mario. The teaser debuted at New York Comic Con. Pratt lends his voice to the Italian cartoon character, alongside Charlie Day as Mario’s brother Luigi and Anya Taylor-Joy as love interest Princess Peach. Jack Black plays Bowser, with Seth Rogen as Donkey Kong and Keegan-Michael Key as Toad....
That actually happened to Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Marvin — way back in May 2019. The duo co-wrote and co-starred in “The Climb,” a micro-budget comedy that Covino also directed. The movie starts out with the two chums, Mike (Covino) and Kyle (Marvin), peddling hard at the top of a steep mountain pass during one of their frequent bike rides. Kyle announces that he’s getting married to his fiancé....
Tarik Saleh directs “The Contractor,” which reunites “Hell or High Water” stars Chris Pine and Ben Foster as two former Special Forces operatives who turn to contract work after being involuntarily discharged from the Army. James Harper (Pine) is desperate to provide for his family, and turns to a private underground military force, led by a mysterious coordinator (Kiefer Sutherland). When the very first assignment goes awry, the elite soldier finds himself caught in a dangerous conspiracy and on the run for his life....
A girl born to working class parents received a strong religious upbringing in Europe. Bright and hard-working, she eventually attended an elite university and studied chemistry. Throughout a turbulent time in the woman’s home country, she married once, had several children, and became interested in politics. After rising through the ranks — including a stint as the leader of the opposition party — she became the first female chief parliamentarian of her native land in her 50s....
The first to hit screens will be “The Dropout,” a new Hulu miniseries starring Amanda Seyfried as Elizabeth Holmes. “The Dropout” debuts on the streaming service March 3, and Hulu has released the first trailer. “The Dropout” is adapted from a nonfiction podcast of the same name, produced by ABC. It also stars Naveen Andrews as Holmes’ business partner Ramesh “Sunny” Balwani. Laurie Metcalf plays Phyllis Gardner, one of Holmes’ professors at Stanford....
Vada’s life doesn’t look that much different than that of any other American teenager: She loves spending time with her snarky best pal, she’s not super-serious about school but she’s still smart, she thinks her parents are kind of square but knows they love her, Starbucks is a major part of her diet, and much of her existence plays out on social media. Today, however, Vada’s life is going to change forever....
Patton opened up on “The Open Up Podcast” about The CW and Warner Bros. TV not having protocols in place to curb racist social media harassment for its stars. “Now people understand how fans can be racist, especially in genre [film and TV], but at the time it was kind of just like, ‘That’s how fans are, whatever,’” Patton said, via Variety. “Even with the companies I was working with, The CW and WB, that was their way of handling it....
Paramount Pictures released the trailer and a Coppola featurette for the upcoming “Mario Puzo’s The Godfather, Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone,” on Tuesday. The film, which has been billed as screenwriter Mario Puzo and Coppola’s original vision for the finale, will premiere in theaters on Dec. 4 and release on Blu-ray and digital on Dec. 8. “I have re-edited it and given it what really isn’t a new title but rather the original title: ‘Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone,” Coppola said....
“The Handmaid’s Tale” stayed focused on its central dystopia until Season 4, when June (Elisabeth Moss) escaped to Canada, and even then she couldn’t escape Gilead. June returned multiple times, including in Season 5 to rescue her daughter Hannah (Jordana Blake) from a life of subservience to men. But the world has changed by the Season 5 finale, “Safe,” which premiered November 9. Gilead is crumbling from within, mainly at the hands of its architect, Joseph Lawrence (Bradley Whitford)....
Here’s a more detailed synopsis per Netflix: “Dee Dee Allen (Meryl Streep) and Barry Glickman (James Corden) are New York City stage stars with a crisis on their hands: their expensive new Broadway show is a major flop that has suddenly flatlined their careers. Meanwhile, in small-town Indiana, high school student Emma Nolan (newcomer Jo Ellen Pellman) is experiencing a very different kind of heartbreak: despite the support of the high school principal (Keegan-Michael Key), the head of the PTA (Kerry Washington) has banned her from attending the prom with her girlfriend, Alyssa (Ariana DeBose)....
That all changes when a mishap on a day trip excursion starts Emma on a serpentine path through a local unsolved mystery involving two young visitors to the area over the 2007 holiday season. Slowly and assuredly, “The Resort” becomes a two-pronged play, with Emma and a reluctant Noah searching for the truth, interspersed with what did happen for and to Sam (Skyler Gisondo) and Violet (Nina Bloomgarden) in those nights around Christmas....
“You use the tools that you bring with telling a movie story,” said Imbert, a former animation supervisor who teamed up with producers Didier Brunner (“Ernest & Celestine,” “The Triplets of Belleville”), Damien Brunner, Jean-Charles Ostorero (who co-scripted), and Stéphan Roelants. “And that’s why we use image, sound design, and music [by Amine Bouhafa] to create something that doesn’t exist outside. Of course, I know and love some animation a lot, but most of my influences are live-action movies....
The two venture into the wild, beautiful, yet daunting region “unmarked by human hand,” where the simple act of waiting is explored as a cure for the hysteria of modern society. A requiem for the call of the wild, if it’s philosophizing paints a cynical picture of humanity’s plight, its breathtaking images overpower it. While the film’s synopsis suggests that the snow leopard features prominently, only a brief portion of the work captures the animal....
In IndieWire’s review of the first two episodes, Elliott Smith wrote: “While many view the West with rose-tinted sunglasses, “Them” shows how the corrosive effects of racism were in full rot even in the City of Angels. As soon as the Emory family pulls into the driveway of its new home, their new white neighbors are out in full force to protest, led by a proto-Karen named Betty Wendell (Alison Pill), in all her mid-century modern brittleness....
The end of Season 6 (and the series) drew a 1.27 rating among adults 18-49, according to Nielsen. That is the key demo for entertainment programming, the one that most ad-supported shows use to sell their commercial time. In terms of total viewers, which count anyone age 2 or older (though really, your toddler probably should not be a regular primetime viewer), 6.4 million Americans tuned in to say goodbye to the Pearsons....
When Taika Waititi’s “Thor: Love and Thunder” opens, our Asgardian god of thunder, key Avenger, and all-around fun dude Thor Odinson (Chris Hemsworth) is at loose ends. And who could possibly blame him? The last time we saw the superhero in this Marvel Cinematic Universe milieu, he was reeling from the events of “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” (remember “the blip”?), and while things were looking up (remember when “the blip” got reversed?...
Today, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that “Top Gun: Maverick” will screen at the festival, likely playing out of competition. While the screening is unlikely to mark the film’s world premiere, it represents a major win for Cannes, adding some serious starpower to the 75th edition of the festival. This will be the first time in three decades that a Tom Cruise movie has played at Cannes. His last appearance on the festival’s lineup was Ron Howard’s “Far and Away” in 1992....
That underlying sense of awe and dread percolates through the duration of Almada’s audacious fourth feature. A far cry from the more conventional non-fiction portraits of Mexican life in “The Night Watchmen” and “The General,” Almada has crafted a hypnotic, visually-driven work in the tradition of “Baraka” and “Koyaanisqatsi” for the digital age, replete with an immersive score by Kronos Quartet and Dolby Atmos sound design. Unlike those freewheeling, montage-based works, however, “Users” is fused together by Almada’s pensive, lyrical voiceover throughout, which injects personal stakes into a roving assemblage of cinematic landscapes that make your average Terrence Malick vision quest feel downright grounded....
As Appelhans watched a friend in Shanghai “struggling with family and class and concepts of success, it seemed like that timeless [‘Aladdin’] story… about a peasant boy who lives with his mother, meets a wish-granting genie, falls in love with a princess, loses himself, and finds himself again, could have newfound relevance today,” he said. “It made me think a lot about the world. In a naive way, I tried to recreate that experience through this story and hope people get a better understanding of China....
