On December 10, “Luuuuuuuuucy” comes back to life in this biopic of the pioneering TV moguls/power couple.
J.K. Simmons is another Oscar winner decorating this Oscar bait. Nina Arianda plays Vivian Vance to his William Crawley, with Alia Shawkat, Linda Lavin, Tony Hale and Clark Gregg.
Will Aaron Sorkin give them the Zuckerberg treatment?
This minimalist, haunted looking take on “the Scottish play” resembles the Orson Welles 1940s version.
Knowing the Coen Brothers (Joel directed and adapted it), no doubt they/he willdeny ever seeing that “Macbeth” before taking on “The Tragedy of Macbeth” for Apple (in theaters Dec. 25, streaming just after), just as they denied taking a look at the original “True Grit.”
Sure.
A great role for the esteemed Mr. Washington, a grand villainous opportunity for Frances McDormand as well.
What do we think?
“Twilight” to “Dark Knight at Midnight?”
It’s dark enough, but the casting and the visuals suggest a tiny hint of Tim Burton whimsy.
Zoe Kravitz, Andy Serkis, Turturro, Farrell and Jeffrey Wright? Keoghan and Dano? I’m in.
March 22.
Warners needs this to work, and it seems more likely to pay off than one might have initially thought.
A less mythic origin story than Nolan’s.
“Halloween Kills” rolled in the loot and blood over this weekend, turning in a boffo $50 million plus for it’s opening.
Poor reviews didn’t hurt it, Jamie Lee being AARP age did not matter.
Wowza.
The second weekend of Daniel Craig’s curtain call as 007 fell off over 55%, to $24 million and change.
“Venom” devoured another $16.5, closing in on $200 million.
Ridley Scott’s “The Last Duel” proved that Matt and Ben aren’t the draws they once w were, and that Adam Driver still isn’t there. At least not in a good action and more picture set in the Middle Ages.
A lousy $4.8 million makes it an epic bomb. It deserved better.
That’s barely better than the latest weekend of the Labor Day opener “Legend of Shan Chi,” which took in another $3.5.
“Addams Family 2” cleared the $40 million threshold with another $7 million+ in the bank.
“Lamb,” Icelandic and odd, isn’t making mince jelly money. $2 million today, just over $500k again.
The perfect finish to a travel day is thus soured by Netflix’s stinginess with its archive.
Pity. Amazon it is, then?
Well, he is the life of the party.
This Nov. 24 Netflix release has the Oscar winner playing a disgraced MMA fighter who reconnects with a son she gave up for her career
A little awards bait in time for awards season?
“The Forgotten Battle” is about a postscript to Operation Market Garden, that late World War II gamble by the Allies to free Arnhem, liberate the Netherlands and shorten the war. That’s not “forgotten.” There was a movie about that debacle, “A Bridge Too Far,” that still turns up on grandpa’s favorite cable movie channels.
This Dutch thriller focuses on one corner of that struggle in the fall of 1944, the Battle of the Schledt, the slow motion slugfest to uproot the Germans from the Scheldt River banks and islands around it so that the huge port of Antwerp could be used to shorten supply lines for the Allies, also an attempt to “shorten the war.”
Where “A Bridge too Far” was a sprawling, all-star film affair, “Forgotten Battle” is a comparatively tidy tale, focusing on a single Dutch family, troops and glider pilots stranded after being shot down on their way to Arhem, and the never-say-die Nazis, rounding up civilians and Resistance fighters, torturing and murdering them even as they had to realize their cause was lost, and in the case of the main German character, unjust and evil as well.
Susan Radder is Teuntje, a secretary to the collaborationist mayor of one of the towns of Walcheren Island. And lest she look smug as the mayor (Hajo Bruins) burns incriminating photos and documents, her “You father works for the Germans, yes?” Her Dad is the town physician. But her 20ish brother (Ronald Kalter) is running around, taking pictures and more for The Resistance.
That puts him and others under threat.
Marinus (Gijs Blom) is a Dutch-German soldier, disillusioned by National Socialism and the war he’s seen. He meets a combat-crippled officer in hospital who reinforces his doubts.
William (Jamie Flatters) is a hot-dogging young glider pilot, son of an RAF higher-up, somebody his D-Day tested superior (Tom Felton of the Harry Potter movies) and co-pilot hopes won’t screw up when Market Garden’s troop drops begin.
Over a few days in early October, their glider is shot down, Teuntje becomes actively involved in trying to save her brother, even if that means helping the Resistance and Canadian troops push into the region determined to root the Germans out of their shipping-threatening gun emplacements.
World War II films cannot avoid the tropes of the European part of that conflict — murderous Nazi occupiers, brave Resistance spies and saboteurs, ordinary infantry caught up in the maelstrom of combat and horrors of “total war.”
But screenwriters Paula van der Oest and Pauline van Mantgem go easy on the melodrama and heavy on the certainty as fatalistic pilots, resigned-to-their-fate infantry and numbed, shell-shocked civilians struggling to “negotiate” with these armed men who have been there long enough for the two sides to get to know one another.
Director Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., who did the Mary Elizabeth Winstead version of “The Thing,” stages spectacular, chaotic (hand-held cameras) firefights where the slaughter is so in-your-face you might find yourself ducking.
The grey chill of fall hangs over everything as downed fliers wade through flooded fields, soldiers scramble into foxholes and civilians struggle to stay out of everybody with a gun’s way, and fail.
Everybody looks a tad too well fed for this to be an utterly convincing recreation of that period of the conflict in the Netherlands. But the cast is sharp, fleshing out character “types” into flesh-and-blood people we recognize. Blom’s haunted, guilty gaze sticks with you, every hand-to-hand fight has desperation and every death has weight and meaning.
That’s all we really want out of combat films anyway, that sense of the swirl and slaughter of history and reasons to believe the characters we’re watching know they may be sacrificed and don’t want to go willingly, even as they hope their efforts won’t be in vain.
Rating: TV-MA, graphic combat violence
Cast: Susan Radder, Jamie Flatters, Gijs Blom, Ronald Kalter, Justus von Dohnányi and Tom Felton
Credits: Directed by Matthijs van Heijningen Jr., scripted by Paula van der Oest and Pauline van Mantgem. A Neflix release.
Running time: 2:04
An animated comedy of mixed messaging, thin humor and indifferent entertainment value, “Ron’s Gone Wrong” still has every chance of winning younger viewers over with its heart. That depends on how much affection kids can summon up for a cute robot.
The animation’s striking — in that pristine, plasticized CGI state-of-the-art way. But after a promising opening act, it never came together for me, never gelled into essential viewing or anything more than cinematic baby sitting.
The story is a sentimental mash-up of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” “Short Circuit,” “E.T.” and “Wall-E” centered around a middle school lad with no friends surrounded by kids with robot friends, the latest innovation from an Apple knockoff called Bubble.
Its hip young co-founder (voiced by Justice Smith) wants to “give the world a new best friend,” a rolling pinto bean called a Bubble Bot, or “B*Bot.” It works on “my friendship algorithm,” Marc claims. You turn it on, it logs into “The Bubble Network” and B*Bot “learns everything about you” and becomes the “best friend” that shares your interests, with all sorts of game, media sharing and cosplay possibilities.
His unhip partner Andrew (Rob Delaney) is older and a LOT more cynical.
“Think of all the DATA we can harvest!”
All young Barney (Jack Dylan Grazer) knows is that every other kid in Nonsuch Middle School has one. And he’s the most friendless of them all — teacher-takes-pity-on-him friendless.
But his Old World grandma (Oscar winner Olivia Colman) and widowed “novelty toy” entrepreneur Dad (Ed Helms) haven’t noticed how he craves a digital friend. When he comes home from school, too shy to pass out invitations to a family-hosted birthday party, they get a clue. But a trip to the Bubble store is a no go.
“Three month VAIT?” Donka (Granny) fumes. “Vat IZZ ziss? Stalinest RUSSIA?”
But they score a “fell off a truck” B*Bot, and Barney is elated. Until the thing won’t boot up. Until it seems to have no capacity to do anything they’re designed to do — learn, mimic, entertain and befriend.
Until it slowly trots though its limited-bandwidth collection of possible names for the kid who is supposed to be his new friend, and settles on “Absalom.”
Barney fumes, dismisses, gripes about “taking him back” to the store.
But when the B*Bot, whom he eventually calls “Ron” (voiced by Zach Galifianakis) after the first three letters of his serial number, shows both a vulnerable need-to-study-to-learn side, and a glitchy tendency to assault kids who pick on Barney, the boy warms to his bot and becomes protective, even when Ron’s brand of mayhem and missteps get the attention of Bubble, which knows a defective product lawsuit when it sees one.
A couple of things stand out in this screenplay. Barney and pretty much all the kids that interact with him are little more than the most superficial of character sketches, with nary a hint of interior lives.
The rough edges are rubbed off of everyone. Even the “bullying” here is softcore.
And the “moral” of the story is a marvel of “have it both ways” sermonizing. Kids falling for this “latest thing” “fad” are missing out on real human interaction and getting out of doors and out in the world. Bad. But B*Bot is supposed to use its data mining to help kids find other kids with similar interests — gaming, “Star Wars,” music, etc.
“I am for friends,” Ron announces, his double-meaning Prime Directive.
So, B*Bots are good?
“Ron’s Gone Wrong” doesn’t find many laughs, although parents and older viewers may get a chuckle out of the sound effects of his boot-up. We hear a dial-up modem for the first time in nearly 20 years. The selfie gags and self-involved/digitally-addicted kids bits are inoffensively played-out in nature.
But to its credit, start-up production house Locksmith and the production team which includes “Arthur Christmas” cowriters, and a co-director from that film as well as a couple of first-time directors, ensure that “Ron” always errs on the side of “sweet.”
Where Ron goes wrong is in the hunt for laughs, with even the slapstick mostly pretty tame stuff. Where “Ron” goes right is in its compassion, a digitally animated cartoon about a robot that truly only hits its sweet spot in the finale.
Rating: PG, some rude material, thematic elements and language
Cast: The voices of Zach Galfianakis, Jack Dylan Grazer, Olivia Colman, Ed Helms and Justice Smith
Credits: Directed by Sarah Smith, Jean-Philippe Vine and Octavio E. Rodriguez, scripted Peter Baynham and Sarah Smith. A Locksmith Animation/20th Century Studios release.
Running time: 1:45
Movie Nation 