If you like murder mysteries, absurdly big mustaches, and Judi Dench in fur coats, then Murder on the Orient Express is for you. Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in the adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel about 13 strangers who all become suspects in a locomotive murder...
Sean Baker’s follow-up to ‘Tangerine’ follows a group of ragtag kids living at a Florida budget motel in a gloriously spirited exploration of childhood.
Former Green Goblin Willem Dafoe will join the DCEU this fall when Justice League hits theaters. His Aquaman character will debut in the DC superhero team-up before filling a much larger role in James Wan’s Aquaman. And while things have been relatively quiet around Dafoe’s Nuidis Vulko and the role he’ll play in the films, the actor has confirmed that he won’t look or be exactly like his comic book counterpart.
Sean Baker’s Tangerine remains one of the most audacious and poignant indie films of the past couple years. Newcomers Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez brought a searing authenticity to a story about trans women of color living in Hollywood, characters rarely if ever explored on screen with dignity and compassion. And with Baker’s follow-up, The Florida Project, he once again looks at the lives of characters living on the fringes of society.
Adam Wingard’s adaptation of popular anime series Death Note drew a lot of heat before the public even saw a single frame, as fans of the original were displeased to learn he’d set the film in the U.S. instead of the original Japan and make the Asian lead into a white guy, a move we shall henceforth refer to as “Ghost in the Shelling.” And while the question of whitewashing will most likely persist on through the film’s August 25 release, we still have yet to see whether it will be a competent horror film on non-politicized terms. Today, the public can start to get an impression of whether the film is garden-variety bad in addition to being #problematic.
While plenty of fans hold Sam Raimi‘s Spider-Man film close to their hearts, it’s probably fair to say that the costume for Willem Dafoe‘s Green Goblin hasn’t aged particularly well. Given the dynamic costumes for the current generation of Marvel villains - including Frank Grillo‘s Crossbones, Cate Blanchett‘s Hera, and plenty more - Dafoe’s Green Goblin seems a little bulky and a lot campy, not unlike a Power Rangers villain that wandered out of his franchise and somehow ended up in the Marvel universe. It certainly gets the job done by the standards of the day, but rewatching scenes from that film suggest that the studio had a missed opportunity to do something a little more memorable with the character.