When recalling inspirations for his new action thriller “The Samaritan,” director David Weaver sites such classics as “The Crying Game” and “The Grifters.” The comparisons seem apt as Samuel L. Jackson plays an recent ex-con whose past begins to catch up with him while attempting to play the straight and narrow with a new-found love.…
One of the more exciting films of last year was Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire,” starring MMA champ Gina Carano as an elite undercover operative betrayed by her employer and out to get revenge. Under Soderbergh’s careful direction, the action flick featured some outrageously entertaining scenes, including one jaw-dropper fight between Carano and Michael Fassbender. Although Carano…
Did you know the working title for “E.T.” was “A Boy’s Life”? Or that both Ben Affleck and Matt Damon were extras in “Field of Dreams”? All of those facts plus 98 more were released today by Universal Pictures to tease their 100th anniversary. Included are everything from the name of the mechanical shark in…
Today, Richard Linklater’s latest film “Bernie” arrives in theaters. It’s the director’s fifteenth feature film – at least since “Slackers” made a national splash in 1991 – and he, like a number of other filmmakers who emerged in the early ‘90s, has enjoyed more of a flirtation with mainstream moviemaking than a full-fledged relationship. But…
Bruce Willis aside, there probably isn’t another pure “action” star these days than Jason Statham. From “Crank” to “The Transporter” and a million films in-between, the actor has become a first-class pleasure to watch as he pummels his way through triads, the mafia, foreign armies and anything else you can think of. That’s precisely the…
He’ll write, produce and perform the score for the upcoming flick.
Richard Linklater has gained a devoted following thanks to films like “Before Sunrise,” “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly.” For his new project, “Bernie,” he reteams with his “School of Rock” star Jack Black for a dark comedy about a mortician who befriends a cranky, wealthy widow (Shirley MacLaine). When she dies (not considered a…
Brooklyn-based musician Paul Brill has made a name for himself in Hollywood, scoring songs for such films as “Page One: Inside the NY Times,” “The Devil Came on Horseback,” “Freakonomics,” and even shows like “Steven Seagal: Lawman.” But he’s also a solo artist, and we have the exclusive video premiere for his bouncy rock track…
Anthony Hopkins has been planning to inhabit the skin of Alfred Hitchcock for years, and now we have our first glimpse of the actor appeaering as the legendary horror director. The resemblance is uncanny, as is to expected from anything involved the Hollywood vet. The photo is from Fox Searchlight’s “Hitchcock,” which details the love…
Earlier this week we premiered the first trailer from Death Cab for Cutie’s touring collaboration with Magik*Magik Orchestra, and today we’re back with the second offering. Whereas the previous video featured the Death Cab guys relaxing against a wall as a parade of musicians strolls past them, this time we get some onstage action as…
One of the best pure action films of the past year was “Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol,” director Brad Bird’s addition to the perennial franchise. With the film now out on DVD and Blu-ray this week, we’ve gotten an exclusive peek at one of the deleted scenes off the disc and it’s a tension-filled glimpse…
One of the most fiercely original films to come along in recent memory, “The Cabin in the Woods” derives from the combined minds of Joss Whedon (“The Avengers,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”) and director Drew Goddard (“Cloverfield”). Part horror, part sci-fi and part comedy, the film straddles multiple genres, infusing each with such creativity and…
Director Mary Herron is no stranger to psychological thrillers; one viewing of her seminal ’90s classic “American Psycho” can tell you that. So it’s no surprise that for her new film “The Moth Diaries,” she’s taking audiences inside the rigid American institution known as the boarding school. More specifically, Herron takes on the bond between…
If the world is going to end in 2012, then Libby Klein suggested that it might happen at the end of a Subway sandwich: in “The Loop,” her entry in Subway’s Fresh Artists™ Filmmaker Series competition, two young men discover an unexpected – and hilarious – nexus in time and space when they accidentally create…
Religion is something I no longer give much consideration to, but the idea of faith, and spirituality, is something still find to be profound, important, and for those who possess either (or both), valuable. That may seem contradictory, but the point is that devotion to some greater force or power, assuming that commitment is in…
Abel Ferrara (“Bad Lieutenant”) is nothing if not provocative, and he looks to carry on that sentiment with “4:44: Last Day on Earth.” As its subtitle suggests, it’s about the last day of mankind’s existence on this rotten planet, and everything that entails from a sociological perspective. Some folks are going batshit crazy holding out…
Stephen Dorff is known as being a versatile actor, but his latest film “Brake” must have pushed the limits. In the picture, Dorff plays a Secret Service agent who awakens to a captivity within a plexiglass coffin inside the trunk of a car, at the mercy of terrorists who are demanding information for a sinister…
Legal and moral stuff aside, there’s no doubt that Roman Polanski is one hell of a director. That’s why it’s particularly interesting to hear the cast of his film “Carnage” discuss the process of rehearsing. In the DVD and Blu-ray bonus features below, Kate Winslet and co-star Christoph Waltz both reveal that Roman required them…
We know a lot about Chris Gethard, like that he has his own talk show and that he loves doing movie interviews. But until today we didn’t know one of our SXSW host’s most intimate details…that he’s an amateur ping pong champ. All was revealed to us at SXSW where we sent Chris to infiltrate…
Director Tony Kaye turned heads with his violent breakthrough “American History X” (and courted controversy when he washed his hands of it in response to reported editing room meddling by Edward Norton). Now after a decade plus break from Hollywood, he’s returned with “Detachment,” a powerful look at the foot soldiers in the war of…
In “Bending the Rules,” Adam Copeland — better known as WWE Superstar “Edge” — plays a New Orleans cop on trial for corruption. When he inadvertently stumbles into a criminal plot, he’s forced to team up with a hard-charging prosecutor (Jamie Kennedy) who’s out to put him in jail. As you’d expect from a WWE…
On the heels of the critically-acclaimed “Animal Kingdom” comes another gritty crime drama out of Australia. “The Snowtown Murders” spins the true tale of a group of serial killers who are now steeped in national lore. With a whopping 11 murders under their belt, what made this case so notorious was the circumstances of those…
Best known for big studio comedies like “American Pie” and “Little Fockers,” director Paul Weitz is going indie with his new feature “Being Flynn,” an adaptation of the book “Another Bullshit Night in Suck City.” Starring Robert De Niro and Paul Dano, the pic spins the tale of a young man (Dano) who encounters his…
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie” is just as absurd as the rest of their trademark comedy; after all, the pair traffic in WTF-brand humor. And that’s precisely what we get with the duo’s first feature film, where two guys (natch) get a billion dollars to make…
