If you made a list of modern-day actresses who would be well-suited to playing Lucille Ball in a biopic, Nicole Kidman isn’t particularly likely to be at the top of that list. She’s shown some aptitude for comedy in the past, but no one would expect her to easily step into the shoes of arguably the greatest comedienne of the 20th century. That was certainly the response from the world at large when Aaron Sorkin’s “Being the Ricardos” was revealed to the world. The Aussie Kidman and Spaniard Javier Bardem playing an American and a Cuban, respectively, who spent a…
Author: Steve Katz
For all of the status that comes from being a newly minted Oscar darling, Guillermo del Toro tends to struggle with getting projects off the ground and into theaters. His list of stalled and abandoned projects is large enough to have its own Wikipedia page, and it has taken him four years to capitalize on the biggest movie of his career, Best Picture winner “The Shape of Water.” Absence can sometimes make the cinema world grow fonder, and the arrival of “Nightmare Alley” comes with big expectations and big promises, despite production delays due to the pandemic and Disney’s acquisition…
At this point, no one can deny Paul Thomas Anderson’s affinity for Southern California in the 1970s. Both “Boogie Nights” and “Inherent Vice” explored the era from opposite ends of the decade and opposite ends of the culture, with the seedy underbelly of a stoner’s world slowly emerging from the 60s contrasted by the seedy, well, overbelly of the porn industry on the cusp of the excesses of the 80s. Both films have a shaggy dog chic to them; “Inherent Vice” is rather famously obtuse, with about as unreliable a narrator as you could find, and “Boogie Nights” distills Dirk…
In the six years or so since Lin-Manuel Miranda hit it big with the opening of “Hamilton,” his meteoric rise has been met with plenty of backlash from certain outspoken corners of the internet. With all of his Tony awards, the Disney+ release of “Hamilton” last year, his work on “Moana,” the big screen adaptation of “In the Heights” and providing the songs for the upcoming “Encanto,” you can’t throw a shoe in Hollywood without hitting something that he’s his hands in. Overexposure can be a dangerous thing in the internet age, especially for someone as achingly genuine as Miranda,…
Whenever we talk about the biggest blockbusters of the movie calendar, it’s rare that the films released by Netflix are on anyone’s radar. And yet, movies like “Bright,” “Six Underground” and “Outlaw King” often have budgets in excess of $100 million despite rarely (if ever) getting the sort of theatrical releases that are usually expected out of such expensive propositions. The company gauges its success on subscriber numbers and views on the platform, though plenty have questioned their methodology in determining how many people are actually watching these things. The result is somewhat ephemeral; they seem to show up almost…
If you’re like me, you might have wondered why Pablo Larraín’s new biopic, “Spencer,” was called that considering it’s about the late Princess Diana. For a large swath of people, especially those outside of Britain, Diana was only known as Lady Di and Princess of Wales. We didn’t know Diana Spencer — only her public persona, her life with and messy divorce from Prince Charles, her death and her legacy in the form of William and Harry. Plenty of movies have been made about trying to reveal the true person behind the public persona, and indeed, this isn’t even the…
When Marvel hired Chloe Zhao to direct “Eternals,” the linchpin of the post-Avengers phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, they could not have imagined that her next film, “Nomadland,” would end up winning three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. The film was originally slated for release around the same time as “Nomadland,” but the entire 2020 Marvel slate was upended by the pandemic, sliding everything into 2021. It turned out to be a nice little coup for Marvel, who suddenly could market the most esoteric film in their catalog as having been created by an Academy Award-winning…
The world is full of people like Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), or Ellie for short, the protagonist of Edgar Wright’s newest release, “Last Night in Soho.” She’s a country girl with a deep love of the 1960s and a dream of moving to the city to become a fashion designer. With the support of her grandmother (Rita Tushingham), Ellie is accepted into a London fashion school and moves to Soho. Her roommate, the insufferable Jocasta (Synnove Karlsen), forces her to move out of her dorm and into the top-floor apartment of a boarding home run by the nice but wary Ms.…
There are a lot of directors working today who have a recognizable style. David Fincher always washes his films in cold, sterile blue hues (when he’s not shooting in black and white, of course); Zack Snyder has never seen a slow-motion effect he hasn’t liked; and J.J. Abrams loves a lens flare as much as Michael Bay loves an explosion. But perhaps more so than any other known director working today, Wes Anderson has a signature style. He’s been in the industry for 25 years now, and he’s just as much himself as ever, meticulously crafting his pastel-infused living dioramas…
For nearly two years, “No Time to Die” has been the canary in the coal mine for the pandemic era of movie watching. The 25th James Bond film was the first to shift its release date in response to the rising threat of COVID-19, and over the next 18 months, it constantly was the first to shift its release date before everyone else followed. MGM has been steadfast in its approach, never giving in to a streaming service or a day-and-date premium rental release. As the pandemic has ebbed and flowed, the theater experience has begun to return in a…