Their Fair Wisdom

It is the Fall of the Woman, and as such, the women shall rise.

Big-picture-wise, we have Hillary Clinton, of course. Silver-screen-wise, there will be Certain Women to mind and also, 20th Century Women.

At least, you must admit it is going to be an interesting autumn.

Starring Annette Bening, Elle Fanning, Greta Gerwig, and Billy Crudup, and directed by Beginners’ Mike Mills, festival-darling 20th Century Women is set in Santa Barbara, Calif., in the late ’70s and explores how three different, vibrant women each teaches a young boy (Lucas Jade Zumann) about girls, life, and love.

Sounds like a coming of age for all of ’em, and I’m in – oh yes I am. You know any year that La Bening represents is bound to be a good year.

20th Century Women will hit some theaters on Christmas Day – ya gotta bait dem awards, after all – before going wide on Jan. 20.

Photo: A24.

Pretty Deadly Mars

They put this one together real fast, huh.

Guess they knew they should strike while the Deadpool-was-a-hit iron was hot.

All glibness aside, I’m talking about Life, a space-set thriller about finding, well...life on Mars, and how said life just might try to take yours. Ryan Reynolds, Jake Gyllenhaal, and The Girl on the Train’s Rebecca Ferguson star.

Safe House’s Daniel Espinosa directed the movie, which is set for release next Memorial Day weekend.

Check its trailer now.

Photo: ScreenRant.com.

The Moan of the Snake

King Cobra is now On Demand!

King Cobra, in case you don’t know, is this indie set in the world of gay porn that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, if memory serves, earlier this year, about the rise of and controversy surrounding porn star Brent Corrigan. The film was written and directed by I Am Michael’s Justin Kelly, and stars Garrett Clayton and James Franco and Christian Slater and Alicia Silverstone and Molly Ringwald and Keegan Allen, and looks kinda crazy (in the bestest way – in a Party Monster-esque sort of way).

Based on the Cobra Killer chronicle by Andrew E. Stoner and Peter A. Conway, the film explores the murderous lengths to which the shady men behind Corrigan – no pun intended – went to keep their exclusive making ’em money.

Check out the trailer for King Cobra now – and your On Demand menu right after, OKRRR.

And your local movie times right after that, OKRRR, OKRRR. If you feel like catching it up on that big ol’ silver screen, King Cobra is also playing in selected cities.

Photo: Out.com.

The Measure of a Man

I still want and have to go see Ben Affleck as The Accountant, but I will admit that the Affleck project I’m most curious about right now is the long-in-the-making period piece Live By Night.

Obviously. The guy gave us the Best Picture Academy Award winner Argo (and The Town). Plus, he worked on this one with producer Leonardo DiCaprio.

So like, duh.

Anyway. The Oscar-winning multi-hyphenate’s new film is now getting a Christmas Day release date in order to qualify for awards consideration (the film then will go wide on Jan. 13). So you know the wait probably was well worth the hassle.

Based on the eponymous novel by Dennis Lehane, set in the Prohibition Era, and co-starring The Neon Demon’s Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina (hulu’s The Mindy Project), Sienna Miller, Miguel, Scott Eastwood, Zoë Saldana, and Chris Cooper, Live By Night will be anchored, of course, by writer-director-star Affleck, who will play the bad-seed son of a Boston police captain who works his way into Beantown’s criminal underbelly in order to tear it apart from the inside out (when things sour between him and them).

Sounds oh-so-simple, and yet you just know it’s gonna be everything but, alright.

Click here to watch the Live By Night trailer now.

Photo: Deadline.com.

When Love Goes Bump in the Night

Amy Adams.

Jake Gyllenhaal.

Kim Basinger.

And The Birth of a Nation’s Armie Hammer.

They are all taking part in designer-turned-film auteur Tom Ford’s next cinematic effort, the thirstily awaited festival darling Nocturnal Animals, a sure-to-be-captivating-and-beyond-stylish offering scheduled to arrive in select cities on Nov. 18 before going wide on Dec. 9.

Adams stars as a Los Angeles gallery owner haunted by a novel written and sent her way by her ex-husband (the Gyllen-yum) due to its thriller-like violence, which she interprets as a veiled threat and a tale of fulfilled symbolic revenge. Check out the film’s trailer now (Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Laura Linney, and Birdman’s Andrea Riseborough all co-star) – and, maybe...perhaps, try to read Tony and Susan, the Austin Wright book that inspired Ford in the first place, before the movie comes out?

I know I’m going to try to.

Photo: Focus Features.

Womanly Going

Alrighty then. Time to get in formation.

Next time I have a day off, Imma run to the movie theater to catch Kelly Reichardt’s Gotham Award-nominated Certain Women, which stars the never-more-It-than-now Kristen Stewart, Laura Dern, the writer-director’s go-to muse Michelle Williams (she starred in Wendy and Lucy for Reichardt), and newcomer Lily Gladstone.

An indie drama based on short stories by Maile Meloy, Certain Women follows three small-town-Montana women as their lives intersect as each imperfectly blazes a trail toward...something new, something...else.

Check out the film’s trailer now.

Photo: Indiewire.com.

You Know His Name

Taking a cue from the powers that be behind Jason Bourne – who named their eagerly anticipated summer-2016 fourthquel after the beloved character we the audience dutifully have been following for close to two decades – here comes...Logan.

Got that right: The boy with claws is going out in style and claiming his given name in the upcoming Wolverine threequel, the first trailer for which arrived today.

The Wolverine’s James Mangold is back in the director’s chair, calling the shots and delivering what looks like – from the subdued preview of it all – as a total thematic and stylistic departure for the Hugh Jackman-led franchise and, indeed, the Xverse as a whole.

It is as if sensible auteurship has taken hold of the mutants at last. (Could this last?)

Based on an arc from Jackman’s career-defining character’s Old Man Logan comic-book story, Logan appears to promise a sort of taking of stock for the guy, with the action set in a barren world in which an older Wolverine finds himself pretty much alone thanks to his healing powers (his face has begun to catch up to his years thanks, perhaps, to what happened to him in his 2013 sequel?).

Patrick Stewart’s Professor X is still around, although barely: Mutants have all but vanished or gotten vanished, and the former leader of the X-Men turns to his old ally for help in protecting a mysterious young girl (newcomer Sienna Novikov) not all that dissimilar from from the gruff mutant.

Mmm....

Wanna know what that’s about? Then mark your calendars for March 3, which is exactly when Logan – co-starring Boyd Holbrook (Netflix’s Narcos) and Elizabeth Rodriguez (AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead, Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black) – is scheduled to begin bustin’ some blocks.

Photo: EW.com.

Losers and Proud and On the Way Back for More

Cute and fun-looking.

Perfectly calibrated in tone.

And still very Guardians of the Galaxy.

I’m talking, of course, about the first teaser for next summer’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 starring Chris Pratt, Zoë Saldana, David Bautista, Elizabeth Debicki (AMC’s The Night Manager), Kurt Russell, and Sylvester Stallone, among others.

Check it out:



Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 – directed by returning helmer James Gunn and featuring once again Michael Rooker, Karen Gillan, and the voices of Bradley Cooper and Vin Diesel (Baby Groot Alert!) – is due out on May 5.

Brother, You in Danger!

Wow. My mind is kinda blown right now.

When I first found out that, for her first big leading-lady movie turn, Allison Williams from HBO’s Girls had signed on to star in Get Out, a horror thriller that also will serve as the feature-film directorial debut of Jordan Peele (Keanu, Comedy Central’s Key & Peele), I – like a doof – presumed we were all set to enter decidedly B-movie territory...that the project would have some silly, easily forgettable laughs and a few cheap thrills.

Boy, was I wrong.

The first trailer for the Jason Blum-produced Get Out is out, and, lemme tell ya, writer-director Peele has dreamt up something truly beyond-scary.

Get Out will follow an interracial couple, played by Sicario’s Daniel Kaluuya (pictured here) and Williams, that travels to her parents’ (Bradley Whitford and Catherine Keener) suburban estate in White Americatown, where they – he, in particular – begin to uncover a so, so sinister, racially charged conspiracy involving calmly, measured speech patterns, hypnosis, and casually told sstories about gone-missing black people.

It’s all oh-so-paranoid in the bestest of B ways and very cerebral and kinda provocative – and I cannot wait to find out how it all ends when Get Out gets into theaters next Feb. 24.

Photo: Okayafrica.com.

Mera’s Here to Stay

If you thought a little getting divorced from Johnny Depp was gonna keep Amber Heard down or, worse, out of the Hollywood game, think again.

The actress is on it, and she’s on it harder than ever.

And Tinseltown’s still with her.

Next up for Heard is the big-time role of Mera in the upcoming Justice League. You know, the DC Comicsverse’s answer to The Avengers.

In the Zack Snyder-directed blockbuster, the Danish Girl standout will be the wife love interest of Jason Momoa’s Aquaman.

So you know girlfriend is going to be featured prominently.

Photo: HollywoodReporter.com.

Enter El Capitan

Johnny Depp’s Jack Sparrow may be nowhere to be found in the first teaser for the upcoming fifthquel Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales – but his presence is deeply felt, alright.

Disney probably left the actor out of promos for now because of his divorce drama....

And also – and this is much more likely – because of Javier Bardem.

See, the Oscar winner is playing Capt. Salazar in the blockbuster. And Salazar is a ghost pirate with a grudge on Depp’s iconoclastic character, whom he blames for the death of his brother.

Oh, boys.

Speaking of, a returning Orlando Bloom and franchise newcomer Brenton Thwaites will be co-starring in the movie.

Not sure if there are any girls in this one.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales is due out next May 26.

And, oh yes, Kaya Scodelario (The Maze Runner) is in this one.

Photo: ScreenRant.com.

Now’s the Time to Correct the Planet’s Course

So...when is Leonardo DiCaprio’s climate-change documentary Before the Flood coming out, already?

Sooner than you think, kids. Sooner than you think.

Just like irreversible climate change, the doc will be here before you’ve realized it.

First, though, check out the trailer.

Now mark your calendars for Oct. 21. That’s when Before the Flood – which counts Martin Scorsese among its executive producers and actually was helmed by Academy Award winner Fisher Stevens (The Cove) – will hit theaters before premiering globally on the National Geographic Channel on Oct. 30.

He’s OK

All year long, ever since he took it to Cannes, Adam Driver has been enjoying this quiet simmering buzz that has surrounded his performance in Jim Jarmusch’s upcoming new film, Paterson.

In it, the Star Wars: The Force Awakens star plays a bus driver and a poet from the titular city in New Jersey, whose name also is Paterson...and whose complacent, comfortable routine is disrupted by a small disaster that threatens his and his wife’s happiness.

Hate it when that happens.

Anyway. Check out the film’s trailer now, and save the date: Paterson is due out on Dec. 28.

Photo: SlashFilm.com.

The Unluckiest Number

Director Ava DuVernay has a special new film coming out soon. Real soon.

Well, the project is actually a documentary, and it is, in fact, hitting Netflix later this week, on Oct. 7.

Titled 13th, the endeavor proved to be so remarkable, it became the first-ever doc to open the 2016 New York Film Festival last week. With it, DuVernay explores how race affects the criminal justice system in the United States of America – and vice versa, I should say – as she examines how the Thirteenth Amendment theoretically abolished slavery in America and essentially created a new form of it through mass incarceration.

Needless to say, 13th promises to be powerful, illuminating stuff.

Check out the trailer now:

Of Style and Apparitions

It cannot be denied that Kristen Stewart’s career is on fiya.

The César-winning actress generated some serious buzz earlier this year, when she premiered Personal Shopper, her latest collaboration with her Clouds of Sils Maria director, Olivier Assayas, as the Cannes Film Festival, which, btw, named him as one of the two Best Director winners it picked for its 2016 edition.

A ghost story set in the Parisian fashion underworld, the film, which will be released next March 10, will center on K. Stew’s Maureen, an American living in France and working as a celebrity’s, you guessed it, personal shopper.

Things take a turn, though, when she begins getting signals from her late twin brother, from all the way from the great beyond – or so she believes.

Sounds interesting to ya? Then check out the film’s trailer now.

Up next for Stewart is Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, which is set to hit theaters on Nov. 11.

Photo: ThePlaylist.net.

Doing the Right Thing

Denzel, Denzel, Denzel.

Oscar season’s gonna be interesting this year, alright.

The first teaser trailer for the long-in-the-works adaptation of August Wilson’s play Fences was released bright and early this morning. And lemme tell ya, from the brief, yet concise looks of it, director-star Denzel Washington – in his third feature effort from behind the camera – has done well by the Pulitzer- and Tony-winning material, which earned him a Tony, too, more than half a decade ago, when the show was revived on Broadway.

Washington’s film, which was adapted by Wilson himself and is scheduled to hit theaters on Christmas Day, will concern itself with the 1950s Pittsburgh-set story of Troy Maxson, a once-promising Negro league baseballer, who now works as a garbage collector. Together with Rose, his wife (portrayed by Viola Davis, reprising her role from the revival opposite Washington), Troy has devoted his life to ensuring that their son, Cory (Jovan Adepo, from HBO’s The Leftovers), gets to have a better life than they did.

If for no other reason than that’s always been his duty...his responsibility.

Check out the preview for Fences now:



See you at the movies, right?

Love at the Edge of the Galaxy

So surprised they didn’t tease the s--- out of this one with trailers for the trailer.

I’m talking about Passengers, Morten Tyldum’s follow-up to his Academy Award-nominated Imitation Game. The upcoming Christmastime release stars Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt, in what promises to be the second-most grabbing end-of-year pairing at the box office after Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling in La La Land.

Pratt and Lawrence – who ended up with the part after Rachel McAdams and Reese Witherspoon both circled it at one point or another (Keanu Reeves was once attached to the male lead) – play a couple of people who meet on board a cutting-edge spacecraft transporting thousands of folk to a distant planet. They come together after their suspended animation faults, and they awaken 90 years too soon. Needless to say, the pair bonds, with the two falling deeply in love – a good thing, for the ship is malfunctioning and collapsing all around them.

Together, Jim and Aurora – those are their characters’ names, FYI – will have to sort out not only why but also how to survive this beyond-massive impasse.

OMG, can you imagine? Like, they paid all that money for that to happen? I would be sooo aggroyed.

Passengers – co-starring Master of Sex Michael Sheen – be in theaters on Dec. 21.

Photo: ThePlaylist.net.

Guns in Hollywood Marketing: Good or Bad?

Well, this is certain to have ruffled some feathers.

Check out this first look at Dylan O’Brien (The Maze Runner) as American Assassin Mitch Rapp. Do you see what I see?

How could you not, right? That is one big gun that young man is carrying – and, for once, I am not being a facetious.

You probably know by now that Jason Bourne took a bit of a stumble earlier this summer, when the powers that be’s marketing materials were called into question for their depiction of that kind of weapon at a really poor time to be depicting ’em in movie posters or to appear to be glorifying their use. I can’t imagine how anyone didn’t learn a lesson there, but here we are, with the O’Brien – who headlines an upcoming adaptation of the Vince Flynn series of books, as a CIA black-ops recruit mentored by a Cold War vet (Michael Keaton) co-investigating a wave of apparently random attacks on military and civilian targets for Sanaa Lathan – all gunned up and ready for action.

Obviously, someone thought this would entice us into putting this one on our lists. Alas, if I – who don’t usually much care for the sort of controversy that engulfed Matt Damon’s latest outing as our favorite amnesiac spy – thought of all of this at first glance, then you can sure other people may have had a similar reaction. Or worse.

I will reserve judgment, as always, on this one, especially because Taylor Kitsch is playing the bad guy. However, I will continue to disbelief the incompetence of this badly taken first step.

Photo: Deadline.com.

Darker Will Be In

Ready for another go?

Better be, ’cause here comes Fifty Shades Darker, starring Jamie Dornan and Dakota Johnson.

I, of course, am talking about the sequel to Fifty Shades of Grey, the sort of hit of Valentine’s Day 2015. The movie’s first Miguel-infused trailer – he covers Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” this time around – hit the Internet today, and things are looking like they gon’ get steamy and dramatic, yo.

All over again.

First of all, Johnson’s Anastasia Steele appears to have taken back Dornan’s Christian Grey. Secondly, they’ve RSVPd Yes to an orgy that requires black tie, a silky gown (grey, natch), and masks à la Eyes Wide Shut. And, finally, a couple of women from Christian’s past – hey there, Kim Basinger and Bella Heathcote – pop into the scene, seemingly prepared to mess with Ana’s head and, probably, her life.

Yeah, yeah – but where is Tyler Hoechlin? Hello! Give the people what they want!

Fifty Shades Darker is scheduled to arrive in theaters on Feb. 10, a year before the trilogy-wrapping Fifty Shades Freed.

Photo: People.com.

Decoding the Future

At long last, it’s time to talk about Amy Adams’ Story of Your Life Arrival.

The new film by director Denis Villeneuve (Sicario) has been making the festival rounds the last couple of weeks (think Venice and Telluride and, soon (I bet), Toronto), to great acclaim, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given the talent involved. The sci-fi-ish thriller reunites the actress with her unequally paid American Hustle co-star, Jeremy Renner (Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker is prominently featured as well), to tell the story of an accomplished university linguistics professor (Adams) who is recruited by the military to ascertain whether these enigmatic aliens that have just landed on Earth mean us harm or good.

No pressure.

Except for the fact that the drama at the heart of it all hinges on the countdown-esque nature of an encounter between two mighty species that could become friends...or warring foes. Check out the film’s trailer now.

And, of course, be sure to find out what happens after the Arrival on Nov. 11. I reckon it’s gonna be cerebral, grown-up good fun.

Photo: EW.com.a