Sometimes it feels like Hollywood is just one giant recycling center: In goes the existing intellectual property, out come the sequels, remakes, reboots, and adaptations. So it’s a little sad when a movie not based on something people already love flops, if only because it could hurt the chances of execs investing…
If the recent Sorry To Bother You presents a head-trip, music-video vision of trying to get by in Oakland, California, then Blindspotting offers a more grounded tour of the city, addressing some of the same or related problems: racism, gentrification, systemic oppression. Given the proximity of the two movies both at…
Note: This article contains plot points of Ant-Man And The Wasp.
Last week, I rewatched Casino, Martin Scorsese’s 178-minute glitz epic about the rise and fall of the mob in Las Vegas in the 1970s and ’80s—a movie that wrestles with its own conspicuous excess. The needle-drop montages, the zillion costume changes and killer suit-shirt-and-tie combos, the physical and verbal…
Gus Van Sant’s new biographical film Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, based on the memoir of the same name, tells the story of cartoonist John Callahan, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who became a quadriplegic after being in an auto accident when he was 21. Starring opposite Phoenix are Jonah Hill and Jack Black as…
Playing a quadriplegic represents a challenge for any able-bodied actor, but it must be particularly frustrating for someone like Joaquin Phoenix, who uses his body no less expressively than he does his face and voice. Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot largely confines Phoenix to a motorized wheelchair, though…
On this edition of Film Club, critics A.A. Dowd and Ignatiy Vishnevetsky sit down to discuss Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s latest star vehicle Skyscraper, the newest addition to Hollywood’s vast stable of Die Hard knockoffs, with the action in this entry taking place in The Pearl, a building that comfortably dwarfs Die…
Middle school is a nightmare. It’s like prison with homework, or a pitiless social experiment. For three very long years, half-adults with raging hormones and underdeveloped empathy glands prey on their peers, pouncing on any weakness, securing through cruelty their own place in the Darwinian pecking order. You don’t…
Gus Van Sant’s new biographical film Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, based on the memoir of the same name, tells the story of cartoonist John Callahan (Joaquin Phoenix), who became a quadriplegic after being in an auto accident when he was 21. At the premiere of the film, Van Sant talked to The A.V. Club about…
Peyton Reed has a reputation for smart and savvy directing, delivering witty, frothy fun in films like Bring It On, Down With Love, and that movie where Vince Vaughn and Jennifer Aniston break up, The Break-Up. It seemed like a thankless task when he was brought on by Marvel in 2014 to take over directing duties on …
If the zombie apocalypse actually happened, what would you do? Presumably, your first priority would be to get somewhere where you’re not in immediate danger of being eaten. And most zombie stories revolve around just that: a survivor’s (or survivors’) quest to find safety. But Dominique Rocher’s feature debut The…
Dwayne Johnson, who recently played a brawny ex-Special Forces primatologist in Rampage, gets a backstory that’s almost as good in Skyscraper: His character, the Ahabically one-legged safety consultant Will Sawyer, used to be an FBI agent, until his left shank got blown off in a botched hostage rescue. Dusting off his…
The Elliott family—that’s Chris Elliott, Paula Niedert, and their two daughters, Abby and Bridey Elliott—is collaborating on a film for the first time. Written and directed by Bridey, Clara’s Ghost follows a self-absorbed showbiz family over the course of a single evening as they deal with personal demons. Niedert,…
It’s hard not to feel empathy for a child who finds herself abruptly sent back to a birth country she doesn’t even remember—that’s why a path to citizenship or legal residency for DACA recipients has comparatively broad bipartisan support, even as every other element of immigration policy remains deeply polarized.…
Writer-director Vaughn Stein and actor Simon Pegg collaborated on a new noir thriller Terminal, an interconnected tale of crime, revenge, and murder, set against the backdrop of a sprawling metropolis. In honor of their new film, we asked the pair to list their personal favorite cinematic demises, which include deaths…
Gus Van Sant’s newest film, Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far On Foot, tells the story of cartoonist John Callahan, played by Joaquin Phoenix, who became quadriplegic after being in an auto accident when he was 21. Ahead of the film’s opening on July 13, we spoke with Van Sant and stars Jonah Hill and Jack Black, who told…
Tab Hunter, 1950s movie idol, died Sunday night in Santa Barbara, California, from a blood clot that caused a heart attack, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Allan Glaser, Hunter’s romantic partner of more than three decades, told THR that his death was “unexpected and sudden.” He was just three days shy of his…
Having presumably gotten its fill of hot dogs, fireworks, and the summer heat, America spent much of the post-holiday weekend in a darkened, air-conditioned auditorium. Which is to say, the box office boomed in the aftermath of Independence Day, moviegoers flocking to films big and small. One studio in particular had…
In the third installment of the animated franchise Hotel Transylvania, Dracula (Adam Sandler) takes a Bermuda Triangle-bound ocean cruise with his vampire daughter, Mavis (Selena Gomez), accompanied by the undead Frank (Kevin James), wolfman Wayne (Steve Buscemi), invisible man Griffin (David Spade), and mummy Murray…
Not content with just being hilarious in live-action projects, Nick Offerman has a lot of love for voice acting in animation. Offerman’s dulcet voice has shown up in The Lego Movie, Gravity Falls, and Bob’s Burgers. Today he adds another entry to his voice-acting résumé as Weedon Scott in Netflix’s White Fang. We…
