Unless you've been living under a rock for the past six months, you're likely more than aware of this summer's The Amazing Spider-Man 2, which finds the titular web-slinger (Andrew Garfield) facing off against a villainous triumvirate including Electro (Jamie Foxx), the Rhino (Paul Giamatti) and the Green Goblin (Dane DeHaan). What you may be less aware of, however, is that Sony is already deep into planning for future installments of their superhero franchise. Now, the studio has confirmed some details of their plans for 2016's The Amazing Spider-Man 3 and films in the series past that.
I have only myself to blame. After checking out the trailer for The Bag Man (previously Motel) and noting the presence of John Cusack and Robert De Niro, two actors who have done terrific work in the past, I started to get a little excited for this indie crime thriller. Perhaps it would maintain a cool, neo-noir vibe, or at least give Cusack and De Niro a chance to craft nasty, interesting characters. Alas, that quantum of expectation going in simply makes it all the more frustrating that The Bag Man is one of the laziest, dopiest thrillers I've seen in years.
Half of the fun of awards ceremonies like the upcoming 86th Academy Awards, taking place on March 2nd, is keeping track of all the celebrities who crawl out of the woodwork year after year to storm the red carpet and present awards. With Ellen DeGeneres hosting the Oscars this year, expectations for a hilarious, enjoyable night are high, and the recent unveiling of a massive list of celebrity presenters is just making us more excited for this year's awards.
After portraying slick, ambitious FBI agent Anthony Amado in David O. Russell's acclaimed crime caper American Hustle, which won a Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture and is currently up for 10 Academy Awards, Alessandro Nivola has booked another buzzy period pic: J.C. Chandor's New York crime drama A Most Violent Year.
Recent attempts to recapture the lightning-in-a-bottle success of Mean Girls, from the direct-to-video sequel Mean Girls 2 to this month's Vampire Academy, have met with varying degrees of catastrophic failure, but it's understandable that studios want to keep trying, given the zeitgeist feel of the original. One such project gathering over at New Line actually sounds like it may have a pretty decent chance of finding success. Titled Mean Moms, it shares a few significant similarities with Mean Girls and just gained a huge star, with news that Jennifer Aniston has entered negotiations for a lead role.
After deftly handling supporting roles in action fare like Man on a Ledge and The Last Stand, actress Genesis Rodriguez is set to make her mark as a scream queen in the upcoming Blumhouse thriller Home.
You see what you've done, Hollywood? With the summer of 2015 completely congested with tentpoles from all the major studios, Warner Bros. has opted to release two buzzy, star-studded projects in the cold winter months of next year. Spy reboot The Man From U.N.C.L.E. has been handed a January 16 release date, while con-artist caper Focus will now be released on February 27.
Though he won't be reprising his iconic role as Captain Steve Hiller in Roland Emmerich's upcoming two-part sequel to Independence Day, Will Smith certainyl isn't finished with the science-fiction genre altogether. Today, we're hearing that the A-lister is in final negotiations with Legendary Pictures and Universal Pictures to star in a potential sci-fi summer tentpole called Brilliance.
For reasons unbeknownst to most logical human beings, moviegoers will soon be "treated" to Pompeii, a historical epic from Paul W.S. Anderson, the man who delivered such modern masterpieces as Resident Evil and The Three Musketeers. For fans of Kit Harington's chiseled abs, the film may prove to be well-worth shelling out a extra few dollars for 3D, but for the rest of us, Pompeii will likely hold little more than a few eye-catching explosions and a heaping of laughable moments instantly questionable by any of us who can point Italy out on a map. Even die-hard Anderson fans may be turned off once they realize that Milla Jovovich is nowhere to be found and, even if she was, it would be really, really hard for her to punch, kick and shoot her way through millions of tons of volcanic ash.
Guy Ritchie, the stylish Brit behind the hyperkinetic one-two punch that was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch, hasn't made a great crime comedy since 2008's RocknRolla (blame Warner Bros., which keeps throwing Ritchie big fish like Sherlock Holmes and The Man from U.N.C.L.E.). It might be a while until the auteur bounces back with another instant classic. In the meantime, at least we have Black Out, a mostly clever and entertaining Dutch flick that mimics Ritchie's furious editing technique, convoluted storytelling and zany characters so meticulously that it almost managed to convince me it was doing something original.
