Fresh off her Oscar-nominated turn in immigration drama Brooklyn, Saoirse Ronan has signed on to topline On Chesil Beach, a long-gestating adaptation of the Ian McEwan-penned novella.
Another blockbuster showdown has been averted. In the latest update on Universal's scheme to dust off its library of classic monsters with a Marvel-esque blockbuster franchise, the studio has shifted an untitled monster movie from March 30, 2018, to April 13, 2018.
Of all the critiques one could level at Judd Apatow, a particularly commonplace complaint is that the guy just doesn't know when to cut. From his directorial ventures (especially Funny People and This is 40) to projects that bear his mark (like The Five-Year Engagement and Get Him to the Greek), Apatow productions are near-chronically overlong and digressive.
Hulu's decision to tease out one episode of its buzzy, Stephen King miniseries 11.22.63 a week - instead of following the all-at-once model made standard for online platforms by streaming contemporaries Netflix and Amazon - is one of those choices that seems misguided from a business standpoint (Yahoo Screen's similar strategy for Community led to that service's shuttering) but creatively right on target.
If a romantic comedy called How to Be Single sounds rather baldly antithetical, that's because the title is a bit of a misnomer. No, the commercials didn't overtly deceive you: this is a glossy, New York-set ensemble rom-com, and it is populated by an assortment of camera-ready, charismatic actors, all of whom play single folk struggling to navigate the Big Apple's hectic dating scene. Its characters are also all flying solo, for a variety of reasons and with wide-ranging levels of success.
Consider yourself warned: Regression is not a horror movie. Despite the involvement of writer-director Alejandro Amenábar, best known for ghost story The Others, and a marketing campaign that has focused on the Satanic cults and human sacrifices wrapped up in the film's messy premise, Regression is actually a finger-patronizing parable about the dangers of hypnosis and hysteria - and a largely intolerable one at that.
HBO's Animals wears its twin inspirations on its sleeve - in five episodes, the New York-set series often reflects both the existential ennui of Netflix's BoJack Horseman and the urban absurdity of that hallowed Internet celebrity known to all as Pizza Rat. With the former's anthropomorphic setup and the latter's scrappy, go-for-broke spirit, the series is a lightweight sort of lark, filled with little observations and quirky, dialogue-driven comedy. It's also one of the strangest shows HBO has aired in some time.
Syfy's The Magicians, an adaptation of the bestselling "urban fantasy" by Lev Grossman, pulls off one fascinating trick in its forceful, flawed first episodes. Combining unusually haunted heroes, a grounded and grungy aesthetic, and unexpected willingness to deconstruct its chosen genre, the series manages to dispense with the hangman's-noose turn of phrase that has accompanied it since Grossman's source material first hit shelves: namely, that this tale of sorcery students grappling with dark forces is just "Harry Potter for adults."
What's old is new again - so it goes in Hollywood, with its seemingly infinite assembly line of remakes and reboots, and so it goes in Dirty Grandpa, the latest in a strange string of comedies all revolving around older men who leer after much younger women as part of one last, inherently sexual blaze of glory before succumbing to senility (the term Viagra cinema has been bandied around over the years, mostly to describe Sylvester Stallone's continued residence in action schlock territory, but it certainly fits here).
