Not that much happens in "The Box," but that doesn't mean it isn't another great episode of The Strain. After the show's fantastic premiere last week, I had wondered how Carlton Cuse, Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan planned to space out their story, and this second episode establishes a quick pace and deliciously eerie style that should serve The Strain very well throughout the rest of the season. And gore-hounds will surely be satisfied, given the gross-out scene "The Box" finishes with.
Showtime's Homeland will be hitting the creative reset button when it returns for its fourth season this fall. Gone are Sergeant Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis), his wife Jessica (Morena Baccarin) and definitely his daughter Dana (Morgan Saylor), who for some reason became one of the most widely hated characters on the 'net throughout the spy drama's first three seasons. Now, Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes), still grieving Brody's death, has otherwise put her life back together and is working as a case officer in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
There have been rumblings of Hollywood power couple Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt making a movie together for some time now, and today those rumors finally hardened up into something concrete. For the first time since the sizzling spy action-comedy Mr. & Mrs. Smith, the pair will share the screen in By the Sea, an intimate, character-driven drama which Jolie penned and will also direct as her follow-up to this winter's WWII survival tale Unbroken.
This summer, Marvel Studios is taking its biggest gamble yet with Guardians of the Galaxy, but with that space-set adventure getting stellar advance buzz, there's no reason for the studio to suspect that it will be anything less than a colossal success. Next year is looking even more promising for Marvel, given that it's releasing Avengers: Age of Ultron, sure to be a box office monster, and Ant-Man, which is finally taking permanent form with Peyton Reed at the helm. Then, in 2016, Marvel is pitting Captain America 3 against Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice (for now), and also releasing an unknown film which we suspect is the Scott Derrickson-directed Doctor Strange.
In this age of blockbuster superhero adaptations like Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice, it's refreshing to see a movie in the genre with a little more modest ambitions. Enter Max Steel, an adaptation of the same-named Disney XD show aimed squarely at the tween/early teen demographic. The flick follows a teen whose extraordinary abilities begin to manifest themselves during puberty. With the help of an alien lifeform, he transforms into a superhero named Max Steel and quickly becomes the world's last hope against forces of incredible power.
When news broke that Scott Pilgrim vs. the World filmmaker Edgar Wright was stepping away from Ant-Man, reactions largely fit into two camps: baffled and disappointed. After all, Wright had been with the project for eight years and was just months away from filming when script rewrites sent down from higher-ups at Disney and Marvel forced him out.
After landing The Walking Dead showrunner Glenn Mazzara to pen the script, The Shining prequel Overlook Hotel has taken another big step forward with word that Mark Romanek is in negotiations to helm the film.
Among Ravens, isn't nearly as deep as it thinks it is. Centering on a group of friends who reunite at a lakehouse for their annual Fourth of July get-together, it shoots for the wit and profundity of The Big Chill, but as the film progresses, it soon becomes clear that directors Russell Friedenberg and Randy Redroad are grappling around in the dark for a greater meaning that they lack the ability to articulate. So, instead of providing coherent ideas about the nature of aging, marriage, happiness and family, Among Ravens plays in disappointingly shallow waters, presenting viewers with one-note characters and a borderline nauseating amount of clunky bird metaphors. Unfortunately, just because Among Ravens may sound profound, that doesn't mean it actually is.
Adam Sandler vehicles are rarely films we look forward to seeing, but the sci-fi action comedy Pixels is primed to change that. Directed by Chris Columbus, the blockbuster centers on a group of old-school gamers who become an unlikely line of defense against invading aliens when extraterrestrials intercept feeds from arcade games, misinterpreting them as a declaration of war and launching attacks on Earth with the same eight-bit characters and strategies.
