Woody Harrelson

We don’t know a whole lot about the Han Solo movie aside from the fact that it’s about Han Solo and he’s a young lad in it, but we have had some descriptions of the other characters to fuel our speculation engines. Woody Harrelson, for example, is said to be playing a kind of “mentor” to young Solo, which those of us who’ve stayed up to date on the Expanded Universe through the years know to be Alezsandr Badure, Han Solo’s teacher at the Imperial Academy who taught him all his flying skills. But now Woody Harrelson is saying that his character, whose name is “Beckett,” isn’t exactly the Imperial officer type.

Audiences first took notice of Brie Larson’s dramatic talents with 2013’s Short Term 12. Now, after earning her first Oscar and landing the lead in Marvel’s upcoming female-led superhero film, the actress is reuniting with the director who helped bring her into the spotlight.

A cute kid, apes loading machine guns, apes throwing grenades, Woody Harrelson shouting at apes – there’s a lot going on in the latest trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes. The third (and supposedly final, but we’ll wait for the box office numbers to determine that one) installment in the Planet of the Apes reboot is an all out war between mankind and ape-kind, and it looks pretty wild.

If you’re going to tease trailers with shorter versions of the already brief coming attractions, this is the way to do it: With atmosphere, style, and intelligence. The latest War for the Planet of the Apes ad arrives ahead of tomorrow’s full final trailer, and it contains very little actual movie footage; par for the course for this kind of pre-tease. But instead of five or six seconds of flash frames and nothing else, this awesome, ominous clip pairs the voice of longtime Planet of the Apes star, the late Charlton Heston, with newsreel footage and images from the previous two Apes movies, setting the stage for “the end,” which is apparently coming in director Matt Reeves’ War for the Planet of the Apes. (We’ll see about that. Apes together are pretty strong at the box office.)

For my money, Rose Mary Walls is the worst mother in the whole of literature, and that includes Sophie Portnoy. A million-dollar heiress who refused her wealth because she believed it’d be good for her children to grow up in abject poverty with a profligate alcoholic, she put her daughter Jeannette through hell. Jeannette would later translate her tragic upbringing into the best-selling memoir The Glass Castle, which director Destin Daniel Cretton will soon translate once more onto the silver screen. And in addition to the first official still above, that film has inched closer to being by laying claim to a release date.

All movies of any genre are influenced in some ways by the movies that came before them, war movies especially. Kong: Skull Island made no secret of its homages to Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line, and War for the Planet of the Apes is attempting a similarly ambitious undertaking. Filmmaker Matt Reeves recently listed all of the movies he’d taken noted on for his Apes film: At Comic Con he said he’d used Platoon, The Thin Red Line, and Apocalypse Now as touchstones, and today he’s listed a few more.

The time for War is finally here…OK, sure, there’s been bloodshed and skirmishes and battles, but what’s happening in the third installment of the rebooted Apes franchise is flat-out warfare. As Andy Serkis’ iconic protagonist says in the new trailer for Matt Reeves’ sequel, Caesar didn’t start this war, and while you probably expect him to follow that up with, “but I’m going to finish it,” it hasn’t come to that just yet.

Five days ago, I denounced the banal evils of the recent trend of running trailers in promotion of trailers when covering the latest buzz for the upcoming Justice League movie. It would appear that the marketing executives at 20th Century Fox have not been reading my daily news writing (I know, I’m as shocked as you are), because they’ve returned today with an 18-second amuse-bouche for tomorrow’s brand new trailer for War for the Planet of the Apes. Give it a look above, it’ll only take a moment. Or, to be precise, 18 moments.

Mildred Hayes has had it. It’s been weeks since her daughter was brutally raped and murdered, and the local police force in Ebbing, Missouri don’t have a single perp to show for all their efforts. Feeling disrespected and unheard, Mildred does the only thing an ordinary citizen at the end of their rope can do: she clarifies which cursewords you can put on a billboard and puts a message right where area sheriff Willoughby will see it. Them’s fightin’ words on her billboards, reading “RAPED WHILE DYING. STILL NO ARRESTS. HOW COME, CHIEF WILLOUGHBY?” And in the newly released red-band trailer begins a long, farcical, spiteful conflict between one-woman army MIldred and the local cops.

Note to all actors: If Jimmy Fallon says to you “I’m not going to ask you about spoilers,” run in the other direction.