Film
Sundance Review: Director Amy Poehler Gets to the Heart of Two Entertainment Pioneers with Lucy and Desi
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: I Love Lucy is so inextricably tied to pop culture that many of its trademarks are still recognizable today, over seventy years since the show first aired. The central duo, brought to life by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, has been an object of fascination for almost as long — look at Aaron Sorkin‘s current project, Being the Ricardos, which has the edge in flashiness thanks to the star power of Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem. Director Amy Poehler‘s thoughtful documentary on the subject has one extremely important thing Sorkin’s series lacks, though — access to the real thing. Thanks to a treasure trove of audio tapes and home movies shared by the daughter of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, Lucie Arnaz, Luc...
Sundance Review: Ramin Bahrani Tests the Conscience of the American Id in 2nd Chance
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: America is a land of mythmaking: if you’re savvy and lucky (and often, unscrupulous) enough, you can carve out a legend of your own design. That’s what happened to Richard Davis, the oddball inventor of the bulletproof vest, who spun a tall tale about self-defense in a Michigan alleyway into a million-dollar company selling protective body armor to America’s police and military forces. A blustering showman with no small sense of spectacle, Davis hawked his wares with, as one flyer declares in bold letters, “SEX & VIOLENCE”: amateur films that featured everything from comedy skits to bikini-clad women to schlocky fictional shootouts that make Samurai Cop look like Dirty Harry. Oh, and he shot hi...
Ana De Armas Superfans Sue Universal for Cutting Her Scenes from Yesterday
There’s a lot of faults to Yesterday, the 2019 musical rom-com that imagined a world in which The Beatles never existed. But of all the reasons to gripe about it, two fans chose a really strange one to bring to court against Universal Pictures: The fact that Ana De Armas‘ scenes were cut from the film. The fans in question, Conor Woulfe and Peter Michael Rosza, filed a consumer protection class action lawsuit alleging “deceptive, and misleading advertising.” Apparently, trailers for the film led them to believe that De Armas had a major role, which was ultimately taken out of the film before it hit streaming. Woulfe and Rosza evidently spent about $8 total to watch the film, which — as their lawsuit implies — was wasted due to De Armas’ absence. Though Yesterday‘s main love inter...
Sundance Review: You Won’t Be Alone is Staggering, Contemplative Folk Horror
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: In 19th-century Macedonia, a young girl is born to a woman in a remote mountain village. But mere days after her birth, the mother is approached by Old Maid Maria (Anamaria Marinca), a mysterious, ancient witch — covered in flame-scarred skin — who lives outside the village and takes the blood of first-born children. Fearing for her child’s life, the mother takes her to a remote mountain cavern free from the witch’s influence, keeping her there for sixteen years without any other human contact. Eventually, the witch comes for her anyway, and soon the girl is transformed into a witch-creature like her, living under yet another stifling parental environment. Before long, she’s left to wander the Macedonia...
Sundance Review: Karen Gillan Faces Herself in Riley Stearns’ Deadpan Dual
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: Sarah (Karen Gillan) is dying of a rare, incurable disease. It’s no big shakes, though, because up to now she hasn’t really lived: she has a strained, distant relationship with her boyfriend (Beulah Koale), her mother is disapproving, and she can’t even be bothered to cry when she receives her prognosis. Still, she unthinkingly accepts an offer to go through the process of “replacement”: growing a clone of her that will learn the ins and outs of her life, then take over when she dies. But ten months of watching her double (also Gillan, obviously) insinuate herself into her life, Sarah learns that she’s making a full recovery. But she’s got two problems: a) her boyfriend and family like the double more t...
Sundance Review: 892 Turns Real-Life Tragedy Into Mawkish Melodrama
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: On July 17, 2017, former Marine lance corporal Brian Brown-Easley (John Boyega) walked into a Wells Fargo bank branch in the Atlanta suburbs, with a grey sweatshirt and backpack, and handed the teller a simple note with four words: I have a bomb. Soon, he’s taken hostages, with police negotiators and a confused media scrambling to defuse the situation. His demands? A measly $892 in disability funds denied to him by the Department of Veterans Affairs. Those are the circumstances reconstructed in Abi Damaris Corbin’s 892, a well-intentioned and occasionally striking thriller that charts the heartbreaking moments of a desperate man’s last gasps at visibility and relevance. Related Video Attica! T...
Sundance Review: In Jesse Eisenberg’s When You Finish Saving the World, Everyone Loses
This review is part of our coverage of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The Pitch: What happens when tensions between an equally oblivious mother and son (Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, respectively) finally boil over? In Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, the answer is, unfortunately, sort of nothing. There’s something to be said for slice-of-life films like this one, adapted from Eisenberg’s 2020 audio drama of the same name and co-produced by Emma Stone and husband Dave McCary. The film raises plenty of interesting questions, particularly around the ideas of altruism, actual moral goodness in a world perpetually concerned with what looks good, and the tried and true theme of generational divide. The simmering story only runs 88 minutes (a dream!), but, throughout that runtime, When...
Arnold Schwarzenegger Involved in Multi-Car Collision in Los Angeles
Arnold Schwarzenegger was involved in a multi-car collision in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Brentwood on Friday night. According to the Los Angeles Times, a female driver of one of the vehicles involved in the accident was taken to a local hospital with minor injuries. Schwarzenegger himself was not injured. TMZ reports that Schwarzenegger was attempting to make a left turn in his GMC Yukon when he collided with a red Toyota Prius. Schwarzenegger’s Yukon also struck a Porsche Cayenne. The driver of the Prius sustained an injury to her head and was taken by ambulance to an area hospital. Advertisement Related Video Police do not believe alcohol or drugs were a factor in the crash, and Schwarzenegger was not given a ticket. A spokesperson for the actor said he cooperated with police, and ...
Holy Bat-Marathon! Robert Pattinson’s The Batman Is Longest Batman Film Ever
Pack an extra Bat-Bladder for this one: Robert Pattinson’s The Batman is the longest film ever to star the Caped Crusader, with a run time stretching out to two hours and 55 minutes including credits. Not only is this Dark Knight also the longest knight, it instantly becomes one of the lengthiest superhero movies in the history of the genre, slotting in just behind the three hour, one minute Avengers: Endgame. Director Matt Reeves‘ new take on Bruce Wayne’s second job has been given a PG-13 rating, dashing the hopes of thousands of Pattinson stans hoping for a glimpse at the Bat-Penis. Zoë Kravitz stars as Catwoman, and she promised extra-realistic combat after training with videos of catfights. As for the villains, Colin Farrell is unrecognizable in prosthetics as the ...
HBO Max Announces A Christmas Story Sequel with Original Ralphie Actor
HBO Max is developing a sequel to the classic holiday movie, A Christmas Story, with Peter Billingsley, the child star of the original 1983 film, set to reprise his role as Ralphie. A Christmas Story Christmas, as its so elegantly titled, will be directed by Clay Kaytis (The Christmas Chronicles), with a script penned by Nick Schenk (Gran Torino, The Mule). Billingsley will also serve as a producer on the film alongside his friend and collaborator, Vince Vaughn. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the sequel will be set in the 1970s and sees “an adult Ralphie return to his house on Cleveland Street to deliver his kids a magical Christmas like the one he had growing up.” Advertisement Related Video Production on the film is scheduled to begin next month in Hungary, presumably with the goal...
Neil Young Unveils Documentary on Making of New Album BARN: Watch
Back in December, Neil Young and Crazy Horse released BARN, an album recorded in a restored 19th century farm shed. Now, they’ve released a documentary on the making of the album. Stream it for free via YouTube below. Recorded in the Summer of 2021, BARN (the album) marked Young’s 14th long player with Crazy Horse, and saw the folk veteran reunite with longtime bandmates Billy Talbot, Ralph Molina, and Nils Lofgren. Directed by Young’s wife Daryl Hannah, BARN (the film) takes an organic approach to documenting the recording process. Single shots depict the band recording entire songs, which is Hannah’s attempt to show the group’s chemistry and prove that no studio tricks polished the album’s finished product. The documentary enjoyed a limited run in theaters last month to coincid...
Scientists Name Spider-Killing Worm After Jeff Daniels
When a hairy, scary spider climbs up the water spout, count on Jeff Daniels to wipe that spider out. He did just that in the 1990 horror comedy Arachnophobia, and he’ll continue doing so in spirit as tarantobelus jeffdanielsi, a tarantula-killing worm recently discovered by scientists at the University of California, Riverside. Tarantobelus jeffdanielsi is a type of nematode, or roundworm, of which there are more than 25,000 described species. But via Science Daily, this is only the second such nematode known to specifically infect tarantulas. “His character in [Arachnophobia] is a spider killer, which is exactly what these nematodes are,” said parasitologist Adler Dillman, who led the team that discovered the nematode. Advertisement Related Video “When I first heard a new species of ...
