You’ve been invited over to a friend’s house and he has you sit on his couch and starts making smalltalk about your trip. He asks where you and your wife where you’re staying while in town and he reveals that he already knows the answer to the question.
After American Sniper was the biggest box office draw of 2014, it seems anyone will pay to see Bradley Cooper in uniform again. Deadline reports Cooper is set to produce Ghost Army, a World War II story about an agency tasked with feeding the Nazis fake intelligence about the actual number of American troops, with the …
Actually, this picture of Reese was kind of my face when I saw this news. The Hollywood Reporter broke on Thursday that Witherspoon is set to star in yet another live-action property from Disney. This time, they are bringing in the actress to play Tinkebell in the movie Tink, an adaptation of the Peter Pan …
This week’s biggest upcoming project was one so weird that we needed a few days to process it. It has been called Godzilla meets Being John Malkovich and Adaptation (possibly even Lost in Translation for good measure), and if it seems like those two titles don’t add up in anyway whatsoever, you’re not far off. …
Reese Witherspoon is a type of host that blends in with the cast and feels at home, similar to how Cameron Diaz’s episode played earlier in the season — Witherspoon’s outing even shares a sketch with Diaz’s. Unlike last week’s episode where there was always this nagging that the writers had no idea what to do with the talent they had on hands, Witherspoon settles perfectly into her role as support, best seen in her monologue where she simply introduces the cast and their mothers so that they can tell cute and embarrassing stories, like how Jay Pharoah was always throwing the artfully crafted sandwiches his mom would make for him. Witherspoon still gets a handful of laugh lines throughout, particularly in a rare-for-a-host appearance on Weekend Update, but her real strength comes from not hijacking the evening, allowing the sketches to live or die on their own merit.
HBO has acquired its next series, as the channel has given a straight-to-series order to Big Little Lies. The show, being billed as a limited series package in the vein of True Detective, is written by prolific TV scribe David E. Kelley, marking his first return to television since the cancellation of the Robin Williams …
One of Reese Witherspoon’s breakout roles was as the ambitious and persnickety Tracy Flick in Alexander Payne’s second film Election. Since then, the pair has yet to work together, but Deadline reported Wednesday that Witherspoon has joined Payne’s latest film, the much delayed Downsizing. According to The Playlist, Downsizing was first conceived back in 2008 …
Wild is a mildly-satisfying travelogue through one woman’s troubled life that never quite delivers the catharsis it promises. Reese Witherspoon gives a brave, physically-demanding performance, despite her character’s unconvincing psychological transformation. Director Jean-Marc Vallée deftly intertwines our hero’s tragic past with her epic hike along the Pacific coast, but neither informs one another on an emotional level. The result is a beautiful looking film that feels lonelier than a desolate mountain pass.
In the wake of tragic events that include her inevitable divorce from affable husband Paul (Thomas Sadoski), the heart-wrenching death of her free-spirited mother Bobbi (Laura Dern), sour memories of a chaotic childhood with her younger brother that featured an abusive stepfather (as well as heroin addiction and random reckless sexual encounters), native Minnesotan Cheryl Strayed (Witherspoon) sets out to conquer the Pacific Crest Trail as a therapeutic means to confront her heavy disillusionment. We witness the determined hotel-bound Cheryl trying to handle her overstuffed backpack (later to be nicknamed “Monster”) that is perched on her petite shoulders and back. And so she sets off, ready to embark on a mission to walk off her major angst-ridden hostilities and heartache in the trying trail that lies ahead.
The Good Lie Written by Margaret Nagle Directed by Philippe Falardeau Kenya/India/USA, 2014 The Good Lie is an earnest, well-meaning film that overcomes its many flaws to tell a life-affirming story about survival and second chances. No work of fiction could ever convey the atrocities of the Second Sudanese Civil War, but this is …
It’s not just that Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies tend to defy any one genre description; it’s that, often, it seems as if the writer-director is trying to play with many genres simultaneously. The only reason that Boogie Nights isn’t the best drama of the 1990s is that it spends a lot of time trying to be the best comedy of the 1990s instead. So Anderson’s newest, Inherent Vice, is a departure in that it mostly sticks to one style (sun-drenched film noir) and one tone (absurdist comedy). It’s also a fine film, which suffers only when measured against the insanely high standard that Anderson’s past work has set.
Even if you were not around during the 1970s, Inherent Vice comes across as a faded, nostalgic memory. Being a faithful adaptation of Thomas Pynchon’s novel, the film recounts the dying days of the free love era, laced with the look, feel and paraphernalia of the subculture. Anderson’s comedic thriller peppers itself with restless, almost out of place laughter, while dedicating itself to the themes of the early Seventies. One is reminded of private-eye classics such as Roman Polanski’s Chinatown and Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye, with traces of Zucker-Abrahams comedies like Airplane! and The Naked Gun. For many, the homage to 1970s filmmaking will be a very real and thrilling look down memory lane. For others, it’ll be a history lesson like no other found in modern day filmmaking.
The Hype Cycle is News Editor Brian Welk’s roundup of industry news, reviews and predictions of everything Oscar, boiled down into weekly power rankings of the buzziest and most likely contenders in this year’s awards season. The Toronto International Film Festival’s People’s Choice Award has been one of the most reliable barometers for both Best …
All coming-of-age stories are, really, about the death of innocence, the moment at which each of us realizes that our innate ability to be impressionable has allowed us to blind ourselves to adults’ imperfections. As such, the new film Mud is a welcome entry into the genre, documenting a particularly memorable time for a young boy as he comes to grips with the idea that he cannot bend his world to his will, to make it as perfect as he’d like