Luke Evans

It’s no wonder Paul Hawkins’ debut novel, The Girl on the Train, novel was quickly pegged “the next Gone Girl,” and that DreamWorks scooped up the rights a year before the novel hit shelves. It’s a murder mystery told by an unreliable narrator full of twists, sex and violence. It has all the makings of a hit. But here’s a hot take: despite topping the bestseller list, Hawkins’ book isn’t good. Piggy backing on the hype of Gillian Flynn’s work, the novel uses a gimmicky narrative structure to glorify melodrama and violence. That could’ve been salvaged as a high-intensity thriller that indulged in the trashy source material, but director Tate Taylor’s (The Help) adaptation falls ill to the same shortcomings of the novel, resulting in a sluggish mess of self-seriousness.

Back in May, Disney released the first teaser trailer for their live-action remake of Beauty and the Beast, and although it was a rather lovely homage to the teaser for the classic animated version, it’s the only real preview we’ve had for the upcoming film. While we anxiously await the full official trailer, new concept art has debuted online that offers our first look at Lumiere and Cogsworth, along with a behind-the-scenes image of Gaston’s famous musical sequence.

We’re so close, guys. So close to the end of summer movie season and the start of the fall, when the weather cools down and the movies start to get interesting again. I don’t know that The Girl on the Train is going to be an awards contender, but it certainly looks like a juicy thriller.

Last month, my home city of Washington, D.C. got a couple feet of snow and I spent three days holed up in my apartment. That brief 72-hour span alone nearly drove me to the brink of insanity, and so I suppose I get where the characters in the J.G. Ballard adaptation High-Rise are coming from. Their luxury apartment complex has sufficient amenities to make entering the outside world unnecessary, and so of course they all devolve into warlike tribes and turn on one another in an orgy of bourgeois social angling gone violent. A few days of snow nearly had me talking to cantaloupes with faces painted on them; life in a high-rise, even a fabulously posh one, would be more than enough to get me to eat my landlord‘s dog.

By now you’ve heard the buzz surrounding High-Rise, the new film from director Ben Wheatley, the deranged and brilliant mind behind films like Kill List, A Field in England and Sightseers. That buzz is well-earned for Wheatley’s latest, which is based on the novel by J.G. Ballard (Drive) and features an incredible lineup, including Tom Hiddleston, Elisabeth Moss, Luke Evans and more. A new trailer has arrived, offering a tantalizing and slightly unnerving glimpse inside the titular high-rise, and teasing the evolving (or devolving) psyche of the residents within.

Director Ben Wheatley and his screenwriting partner Amy Jump are known for their specific, darkly humorous sensibilities, from the horror thriller Kill List to the black and white psychedelic intensity of A Field in England, and the bleak hilarity of Sightseers. The duo return this year with High-Rise, based on J.G. Ballard’s sophisticated dystopian tale of class warfare in an elegant apartment block. It may be his most inaccessible and tonally ambitious film to date, but it also might be his best.

It’s an undisputed scientific fact that Beauty and the Beast’s Gaston is the greatest villain in the Disney animated canon. After all, we’re talking about a guy whose theme song is all about how many eggs he eats and how every last inch of him is covered in hair. Sorry Maleficent, you have nothing on this guy. So, the news that Luke Evans has been cast as Gaston in Disney’s upcoming live action take on Beauty and the Beast has us feeling awfully judgmental. Sure, Evans is a good actor, but is he Gaston good?

It wasn’t that long ago that we heard about the possibility of Luke Evans departing the long-gestating reboot of ‘The Crow,’ which seemed like odd timing, given that the project had just attracted a new (and Edgar Wright-approved!) director. But this weekend makes the news more official, as the ‘Dracula Untold’ star has decided to move on from the project, leaving the iconic role open once again.

Given the franchise’s tragic history (including original star Brandon Lee’s on-set death during the film of the original film), you have to wonder if ‘The Crow’ is cursed. Just hours after the reboot of the franchise lost yet another director (J. Javier Gutierrez, following in the footsteps of Juan Carlos Fresnadillo) and gained another (Corin Hardy) comes word that the new star of the franchise, Luke Evans might be taking his leave of the supernatural, super goth-y superhero franchise as well.

The reboot of ‘The Crow’ has been in development for years, with two different directors attached, and several actors—including Bradley Cooper and Tom Hiddleston—connected to the project at various times. And now the film has once again lost a director, as J. Javier Gutierrez has left the long-gestating project, and gained a new one in Corin Hardy. But don’t worry: Hardy comes with a pretty impressive reference from fellow director Edgar Wright, which means that this remake might actually be in solid hands … for the time being.