Starring Bradley Cooper, Lady Gaga, and Sam Elliot, 2018’s A Star is Born is based on the 1976 screenplay of the same name and the story by William Wellman and Robert Carson. This telling sees Bradley Cooper’s first solo outing in the director’s chair confidently engage with the fourth telling of A Star is Born. Bradley Cooper, most known for his role as Marvel’s Rocket Raccoon and Oscar-nominated turn as Chris Kyle, delivers a career best performance as Jackson Maine, a successful rock musician struggling with some demons along the way. Cooper is nearly unrecognizable in the role, both in…
Author: Guest post
From Sony Pictures comes the Ruben Fleischer directed “Venom”, starring Tom Hardy, Michelle Williams, and Riz Ahmed. After a LIFE Corporation ship crash lands back on Earth, things begin to go haywire for Eddie Brock (Hardy), a local beat reporter uncovering the crimes done to the citizens of the California Bay Area. Along the way he gets thrust into an unexpected alien relationship that will change Eddie’s life forever. Ruben Fleischer is a director that revels in a self-aware attitude. Particularly with a film like Zombieland (2009) that has become an undeniable cult classic for its riff on zombie films.…
“Spiral” is written and directed by Joe Clarke, and stars Anthony Stratton, Hayes McEachern, and Michael Vlamis. Six friends have their sights set on a thrilling weekend away for Corey’s bachelor party. After a long night of partying, the friends wake up to one of their friends missing, and Ellis decides to take action to uncover where their friend has gone. With Clarke being an independent director, it is a pleasant surprise at how well he implements big budget techniques into the look and feel of his film. In a horror film, lighting is a huge aspect of immersing your…
Writer and director Shane Black follows up his underrated 2016 buddy cop crime drama, The Nice Guys, with 20th Century Fox’s, The Predator. Starring Boyd Holbrook (Logan), Trevante Rhodes (Moonlight), and Jacob Tremblay (Room), The Predator is the latest entry in the Predator franchise where the eponymous character comes to Earth for reasons unknown to his fellow characters. Along the way, secrets are split open and the Predator’s motivation is revealed through blood, guts, vulgar language, and alien technology. John McTiernan’s 1987 classic is still the gold standard for the Predator franchise due to it’s vicious simplicity. McTiernan’s ability to limit…
Directed by Peter Berg and starring America’s everyman, Mark Wahlberg, Mile 22 is this Summer’s latest blockbuster offering. Co-starring audience favorite, Iko Uwais (The Raid), Ronda Rousey, Lauren Cohan, and John Malkovich, Mile 22 is a 90-minute journey where bullets fly and grenades explode across the screen. Thankfully, the aforementioned 90-minute runtime is the only good thing about Mile 22 as it ensures you won’t have to stay in the theater to endure its brain-numbing assault on the senses very long. As the film opens, it’s not hard to tell what demographic Peter Berg has his crosshairs set on. Berg…
Written and directed by Spike Lee (Do the Right Thing) and based on the novel Black Klansman by Ron Stallworth, BlacKKKlansman stars John David Washington (Ron Stallworth), Adam Driver (Flip Zimmerman), Topher Grace (David Duke), and Laura Harrier (Patrice Dumas) in a story about “some fo’ real, fo’ real shit”. It’s a story where rookie detective Ron Stallworth leads the investigation of a local Ku Klux Klan chapter in an attempt to get closer to the Grand Wizard of the Klan, David Duke. Anyone familiar with Spike Lee’s work will recognize the stylistic techniques Lee brings to every joint. Anyone…
Hitting theaters this weekend is the sixth installment of the 22 year-old Mission: Impossible franchise, Mission: Impossible – Fallout. Despite being the sixth entry, Fallout manages to be the first film in the franchise to have a returning director in Christopher McQuarrie, and is also the first true sequel to a previous entry. Whereas most sequels in this franchise are usually separated by an unidentified amount of years, Fallout takes place two years after the events of Rogue Nation (2015), when Ethan Hunt and the rest of the IMF team are still suffering from the ramifications and consequences of the demise…
Ant-man and the Wasp is Marvel Studios’ follow up to the colossal, game-changing events of Avengers: Infinity War. In Scott Lang’s second adventure we see him team up with Hope Van Dyne (Evangeline Lilly) and Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) once again to rescue Janet Van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) from the Quantum Realm. Director Peyton Reed returns to try and cleanse our palette from the “dark”, “heavy”, and “intimidating” epic Infinity War. Unfortunately for us, Reed’s second outing in the MCU is a small scale, unimaginative vision of a frustratingly awful script. Ant-man and the Wasp starts like many of the recent MCU…
It’s been three years since Denis Villeneuve’s 2015 crime drama Sicario hit theaters. Along with screenwriter Taylor Sheridan, composer Johann Johansson, and cinematographer Roger Deakins, Villeneuve created a masterpiece that made its way into the discussion of being “one of the best films of this generation”. Villeneuve’s subtlety and powerful images drew audiences into a grim reality not too far from the world we live in today. Villeneuve never had a sequel in mind, but Hollywood does what Hollywood does. They seize an opportunity when they see one, and now we have the less than rewarding follow-up Sicario: Day of…
Set three years after the events of the collapse of Jurassic World, director J.A. Bayona guides the “Jurassic” franchise down a familiar, but imaginative path in Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. In the first scene, Bayona sets the tone for an exhilarating ride that isn’t without its fair share of cheesy moments. It’s a film that maintains franchise congruity while implementing new directorial enhancements to its complicated history. After the unparalleled success of Steven Spielberg’s 1993 classic, the “Jurassic” franchise instantly hit a steep decline. Despite The Lost World’s visceral endeavor, it simply didn’t measure up to the original’s seamless blend of…
Solo: A Star Wars Story, the fourth film in Star Wars’ “Disney Era”, just hit theaters for longtime fans and newcomers alike. Solo has already received plenty of backlash since its announcement and it’s been fighting an uphill battle ever since. From the concerns over the casting of the unknown Alden Ehrenreich as Han Solo, and the infamous behind the scenes fiasco with Phil Lord and Chris Miller, it seemed as if Solo was a doomed project from the start. Thankfully, Disney ended up recovering as best they could by hiring a Lucasfilm alum in Ron Howard to build some optimism…
Deadpool 2 hits theaters around the country this week as Ryan Reynolds returns as “The Merc with a Mouth” in a bigger, longer, and funnier sequel. If you’re familiar with Deadpool, you know exactly what you’re in for. From the get go, Deadpool 2 pulls in audiences with the anticipated meta nature of the titular character and the film never lets up from there. As the story progresses, the jokes get bigger and funnier as Deadpool and his supporting cast deliver a sequel that surpasses the first film in every way. The first thing to take note of is director David Leitch’s…
