Welcome to Development Hell, the fiery pit into which we fling recent developments in casting, distribution, and everything else that’s new and mildly interesting in the Boschian phantasmagoria of the entertainment industry.
The 90th Academy Awards will air this Sunday, March 4, and Film Club is counting down the days leading up to the ceremony with an examination of this year’s major categories. Each day, A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky will break down a category and give us their picks for who …
The Oscars are less than a month away, but there are a handful of films from this year’s Best Picture lineup we haven’t covered on Film Club. So we’re catching up with these contenders in a few special-edition episodes. First up, A.V. Club film editor A.A. Dowd and staff critic Ignatiy Vishnevetsky discuss Darkest Hour
Last year’s Screen Actors Guild Awards felt sort of like a turning point in our modern age of celebrities publicly speaking out on political topics, coming right on the heels of President Shithole’s first attempt at a travel ban. This year, with the Time’s Up campaign in full swing and the Women’s March events…
Joe Wright’s new film Darkest Hour follows Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, during a crucial moment at the beginning of World War II. In the video above, Oldman talks about how playing Churchill inhabited every aspect of his life, and tells us about the app he used to prepare for the role.
The baroque competence of Joe Wright, the director who never met a camera movement he couldn’t overwork, makes Darkest Hour one of the more enjoyable entries in the endless, post-King’s Speech cycle of mannered prestige biopics; it turns out there is something of an art to these things. But no amount of distancing…
Joe Wright’s new film Darkest Hour follows Winston Churchill, played by Gary Oldman, during a crucial moment against Hitler’s army at the beginning of World War II. In the video above, Oldman talks about playing Churchill, the respect people have for the former prime minister, and never being out of full makeup on set.
“Did Jesus worry about being liked?” The unexpected surprise of this year’s TIFF turned out to be Paul Schrader’s First Reformed (Grade: B+), a grotesque dual homage to Diary Of A Country Priest and Winter Light in which the alcoholic rector of a nearly empty church in upstate New York is asked to hide a suicide bomb…
The Hitman’s Bodyguard, which bears the tagline “Get triggered” and is essentially a dumber, tackier Midnight Run, was destined to be one of those Neanderthalic, faux-merican EuropaCorp action movies, like The Transporter or From Paris With Love—except fate fumbled, and the film ended up as a coasting-on-star-power…
There are probably some historical figures who have been portrayed on film more times than Winston Churchill, but he’s definitely up there. That means if a movie or TV show is going to have Winston Churchill as a character, it has to do something really special or noteworthy to set its Churchill apart from the…
Since making his big breakthrough as the plucky orphan of Martin Scorsese’s Hugo, Asa Butterfield has basically cornered the market on quivering lumps of gawky adolescent sensitivity. But he’s never played a character quite as unbearably special as Gardner Elliot, the wide-eyed emo starchild of The Space Between Us.…
The low-wattage, high-concept psychological drama Man Down is too misbegotten to be rescued by Shia LaBeouf’s Method lead performance; in fact, the most interesting thing about it is his masochistic commitment to the film. Directed and co-written by the once promising Dito Montiel (Fighting), the movie sloppily…
In the trailer for The Space Between Us, a female astronaut on a long-term Mars mission discovers that she’s pregnant and must give birth shortly after arriving on the planet. Sixteen years later, her Martian son (Asa Butterfield) gets a chance to visit Earth. However, scientists are keeping him confined because the…
Violent, low-IQ psychopath Jericho Stewart (Kevin Costner) is implanted with the memories of a dead spy by the CIA, only to escape in London, where he uses his newly acquired skills to disable security systems, speak French (which be believes is Spanish), make waffles, and wreak havoc, all the while dodging…
Though he spent the bulk of the ’90s playing iconic heroes like Wyatt Earp and Robin Hood, Kevin Costner’s been eager to tap into his dark side as of late. His latest film, Criminal, sees him playing a volatile death-row inmate who, for some reason, is given a chance at redemption when he’s implanted with a CIA…
Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by the week’s new releases or premieres. This week: The sequel to blatant Die Hard knockoff Olympus Has Fallen hits theaters Friday, so let’s look back on some other Die Hard knockoffs, all of them much better than Olympus Has Fallen.
After making his name playing straight-arrow good guy—from Elliott Ness to Robin Hood to a certain pee-drinking man-fish—Kevin Costner has taken to playing against type in recent years, as he does here in Criminal, where he plays a remorseless, unfeeling killer. There’s a twist, however, as Gary Oldman’s CIA boss…
Like a lot of film versions of classic modern plays, Tom Stoppard’s 1990 adaptation of his meta-theater masterpiece Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead documents two eras. The play remains to some extent a product of its time: a standout from a stretch of the 1960s when the stage was dominated by British dramatists…
While it might seem daunting to most actors to play an established and beloved character, managing audience expectations while trying to turn in your best performance, certain thespians just seem to take to it, for whatever reason. They’re the adaptation all-stars, a team of (mostly British) actors who have conquered…
Every day, Watch This offers staff recommendations inspired by a new movie coming out that week. This week: Because it’s Star Wars Week here at The A.V. Club, we’ve singled out some of the more interesting movies inspired or influenced by George Lucas’ beloved space opera.
