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This Week In Trailers: Senna, The Return Of The Moonwalker, Surrogate Valentine, Transcendent Man, Marianne By Christopher Stipp/March 4, 2011 6:30 pm EST Trailers are an under-appreciated art form insofar that many times they’re seen as vehicles for showing footage, explaining films away, or showing their hand about what moviegoers can expect. Foreign, domestic, independent, big budget: I celebrate all levels of trailers and hopefully this column will satisfactorily give you a baseline of what beta wave I’m operating on, because what better way to hone your skills as a thoughtful moviegoer than by deconstructing these little pieces of advertising?...

Trailer Round-Up: ‘Orange Is The New Black’, ‘Witch’, ‘McQueen’, ‘The Children Act’, ‘Yardie’, ‘Insecure’ By Chris Evangelista/June 8, 2018 5:30 am EST We’ve cast our nets into the sea of content and hauled in a fresh batch of movie trailers, just for you. In this trailer roundup, you’ll see trailers for the new season of Orange Is The New Black, the Korean supernatural action flick Witch, the documentary McQueen, the courtroom drama The Children Act, the Idris Elba-directed Yardie, and Insecure season 3....

‘Akira’ Turns 30 And It Remains Essential Sci-Fi And Gateway Anime By Joshua Meyer/July 16, 2018 12:00 pm EST At the very beginning of Akira, Katsuhiro Otomo’s landmark anime feature, the date “1988.7.16” appears on screen as the camera traces a long metropolitan expressway up through a vast urban sprawl to where a cluster of Tokyo skyscrapers is visible with Mount Fuji in the distance. Suddenly, everything is enveloped in an all-consuming white blast....

‘Django Unchained’ Synopsis Explains Tarantino’s Latest For The Spoiler-Averse By Russ Fischer/April 13, 2012 8:30 am EST The PR reps for Quentin Tarantino’s new film, Django Unchained, have sent out the official synopsis for the film. There isn’t any new detail in there, but I thought we’d pass it along for those who have only seen the barest recap of what the story is about, and would like to know a little bit more without having to worry about big story spoilers....

/Film Interview: ‘Need For Speed’ Director Scott Waugh By Germain Lussier/March 13, 2014 1:00 pm EST Love it or hate it, for Need for Speed, director Scott Waugh had a vision. This is a video game adaptation, yes, but Waugh wanted to ground it in as much reality as possible. Everything had to be real. Every race, every stunt, every jump, every crash. It’s all practical. Then again, he was also beholden to the title “Need for Speed” and the film fulfills the name’s implied promise, giving audiences two hours of almost non-stop car craziness....

‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ Trailer Breakdown: All The New Footage In The Super Bowl Trailer By Hoai-Tran Bui/Feb. 5, 2018 1:00 pm EST The first trailer for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom generated an admittedly tepid response. Here we go again, people thought, as the trailer went through the motions of showing more dinosaurs, more explosions, and more chases — but this time, without heels. But then Paramount dropped a second trailer during Super Bowl Sunday, and it blew us all away....

‘Kin’ Early Buzz: Violent, Sci-Fi Coming Of Age Story Falls Flat By Ben Pearson/Aug. 29, 2018 4:30 pm EST Jonathan and Josh Baker’s debut feature Kin is an expansion of their short film Bag Man, a sci-fi coming-of-age story about a young boy who finds an oversized alien gun. The feature version, which features the boy and his brother on the run across the country with the gun in tow, has a stacked cast, including veterans like Dennis Quaid, Jack Reynor, Zoe Kravitz, Carrie Coon, and James Franco and newcomer Myles Truitt in the lead....

‘Kong: Skull Island’ Review: A Visual Feast Of Gnarly Monster Movie Action & Adventure By Ethan Anderton/March 12, 2017 7:30 am EST There have been plenty of iterations of King Kong over the years, from his debut in the classic RKO picture in 1933 that would influence generations of filmmakers to Peter Jackson’s romantic epic in 2005. But I can guarantee that you’ve never seen a King Kong as badass, stylish and just plain cool as director Jordan Vogt-Roberts delivers in Kong: Skull Island....

‘Song Of Back And Neck’ Review: Toby From ‘The Office’ Laughs Through The Pain [Tribeca] By Marshall Shaffer/May 1, 2018 4:30 pm EST Do we really need another sad middle-age white guy comedy? Probably not, but if we have to have them, at least let them be more like Paul Lieberstein’s Song of Back and Neck. The artist best known to audiences as Toby from TV’s The Office makes his first step behind the camera for feature filmmaking to largely positive results, handling some slightly morose material with equal parts sincerity and dry humor....

‘Star Trek: Discovery’ Finally Brings The Party In Its Best Episode Yet By Monique Jones/Oct. 30, 2017 9:30 am EST Normally, I don’t look at other outlets’ reviews before I write my own. But in the middle of searching for the name of the Wyclef Jean song used in this week’s episode, “Magic to Make the Sanest Person Go Mad,” I came across the headline for IndieWire’s review, which simply stated, “‘Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad’ Delivers the First Truly Great Episode of the Series....

By Peter Sciretta/Nov. 25, 2014 10:00 am EST An early 88-second tease of Star Wars: The Force Awakens can be seen in 30 theaters (20 with IMAX screens, 10 without) across North America beginning Friday morning, November 28th. Because of this I’m getting a ton of questions on Twitter – what movies is it playing in front of, when will it be online, what is in the trailer – so I thought I’d put together a Frequently Asked Questions document to answer your Force Awakens trailer questions....

‘Summer Of ‘84’ Review: Nostalgia Runs Out Of Steam In Disappointing Diet ‘Stranger Things’ [Sundance] By Ethan Anderton/Jan. 28, 2018 11:00 am EST While nostalgia for the 1980s has run rampant for years now, in a post-Stranger Things world, movies looking to capture the spirit of the decade and still deliver some thrills and chills need to try a little bit harder to stand out. With the intriguing plot involving the possibility of a serial killer living next door to a teen boy, Summer of ‘84 looked like it could be a more mature, bloodier and satisfying piece of genre filmmaking....

‘The Jungle Book’ Early Buzz: Critics Go Wild For Disney’s 3D Remake By Angie Han/April 4, 2016 6:00 am EST A little less than a year ago, the very first footage from The Jungle Book brought the house down at Disney’s D23 expo, with critics raving about the “next level” animation. This past weekend, the first reviews from the full-length film finally hit theaters, and… well, it turns out critics still like it a whole heck of a lot....

‘The LEGO Batman Movie’ Review Early Buzz: Everything Is Still Mostly Awesome By Ethan Anderton/Feb. 6, 2017 7:30 am EST In just a few days, we’ll get to see if The LEGO Batman Movie lives up to the hype and continues the inspired style and imagination of The LEGO Movie that introduced us to this brilliant version of Batman voiced by Will Arnett. This past weekend the first press screenings rolled out, and the reviews were available online later in the day....

‘Uncle Drew’ Interview: Lil Rel Howery Talks The Love Of The Game, ‘Space Jam’, Working With Legends & More By Steven Prokopy/July 1, 2018 10:00 am EST Comedian/actor Lil Rel Howery is two things to the core: a Chicagoan and a basketball fan. So when he was asked if he wanted to star in a feature film adaptation of the popular Uncle Drew commercial shorts (all made by Pepsi), with NBA legend Kyrie Irving returning as the titular character, he was quick to say yes without even looking at a script....

‘Veronica Mars’ Review: The B*tch Is Back By Angie Han/March 12, 2014 8:30 am EST For most of the past year, the conversation surrounding Rob Thomas’ Veronica Mars has been about the way it was made. Now that the film premiere has finally arrived, though, the talk can turn to what he’s made. In an ideal world, Veronica Mars would serve the dual purpose of satisfying existing Marshmallows, as Veronica Mars devotees call themselves, while making new ones....

By Jacob Hall/Nov. 3, 2016 1:00 pm EST We already knew that Wonder Woman would be bookended with modern day sequences that will tie the film into the large DC movie universe and further push us toward Justice League. Still, it’s a nice choice to have Diana (Gal Gadot) pay a visit to the Louvre in Paris, a centuries-old, distinguished institution that has weathered the years, taking on modern touches to keep itself fresh and relevant....

Anthony Anderson And Marielle Jaffe Join Scream 4 By Peter Sciretta/June 18, 2010 1:30 pm EST Anthony Anderson and Marielle Jaffe have joined the ever-growing cast of Wes Craven’s horror sequel Scream 4. The news was buried in a recent EW piece on Lauren Graham’s casting. No word on what new characters they will play, but we have speculation after the jump. Anderson has played a cop on Law and Order and The Shield, so I’m guessing he plays one of the two detective roles: DETECTIVE HOSS (MALE 30s-40s; any ethnicity) New school cop....

Dave Filoni On How Saw Gerrera Ended Up In ‘Rogue One’, Sharing Continuity With ‘Rebels’ By Peter Sciretta/Aug. 30, 2016 8:00 am EST A few months back it was revealed that Forest Whitaker’s character in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is Saw Gerrera, the Onderon rebels leader who fought alongside Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated series. In Rogue One the character has become “a battered veteran who leads a band of Rebel extremists” and wears an armored suit for flight and maintenance....

Here Are 17 Actresses Who Could Play Batgirl For Joss Whedon By /Film Staff/April 5, 2017 9:00 am EST Last week, it was revealed that Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator and The Avengers director Joss Whedon is going to write and direct a Batgirl movie. It feels like a pitch-perfect match of storyteller and character – Whedon’s voice feels perfectly honed to tell the story of Barbara Gordon, the daughter of the Gotham City police commissioner who decides to take her father’s war on crime to the next level....