Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 5:00PM Look at this amazing poster for Woody Allen's Cafe Society (2016). The film will open the Cannes Film Festival and also, a little closer to home, the Seattle Film Festival this May. It will play near you this August as counterprogramming to Suicide Squad and Pete's Dragon.
After the jump, thoughts I had as they came to me unedited. Share yours, too, why don'cha...
Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 3:23PM Team Experience is at the Tribeca Film Festival. Here's Jason on King Cobra.
Film festivals make for weird bedfellows, and so it was settling in to see King Cobra - the new true crime flick detailing the rise of gay porn star Brent Corrigan and his sordid side-wind through murder - at 9am on a Sunday morning. I literally passed people dressed up for church as I went to the movie theater. Now I could make the case that I was also set for a different sort of worship, getting on one's knees and what not, but that'd be cheap, and we wouldn't want to be cheap. (No, never.)
Certainly not while talking about a film so hilariously devoted to luxurious cheapness. Think back on the film and I bet your mind will be less flooded with memories of oiled pecs than it will be by leather couches abandoned across stretches of beige suburban carpets, shades drawn, piles of video games seemingly stacked in every corner.
Anyway I'm as shocked and surprised as any of you that King Cobra is killer. Funny, sexy, and bottomlessly absurd, a wall-fly's view of the ass-smacks of the perfectly self-involved, with solid to straight great performances all around. Garrett Clayton is the lube that sticks the film together and he slides it straight into third, juggling every ball(s) the movie can throw at him. And Christian Slater is especially lovely as the lonely and aged-out home-bound pornographer inviting the world's twinks into his living-room and falling in love with every last one - his romantic weariness in a lesser film would read only as lecherous, but Cobra wants to walk the line, and it magically manages to.
Indeed the best thing about the film is its refusal to demonize sex - I was worried as it plowed further along into its darker places it would go where all these stories inevitably exhaustingly go, getting preachy and conservative and making us feel bad for the desires that half an hour earlier it was gleefully exploiting. I mean yes its a story about young people slipping into the sex industry and yadda yadda first-degree murder, but its characters also find strength and self-actualization and even love through their bruised but beautiful sexuality. You can take this one to the spank bank - it's ribbed for all of our pleasures.
Grade: B+
Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 1:00PM The Bourne Identity. The Bourne Supremacy. The Bourne Ultimatum. The Bourne Legacy. Miss Bourne If You're Nasty. Universal Pictures correctly assumes "You know his name" which is a brilliant tagline for the forthcoming fifth* entry in the franchise, titled Jason Bourne. In fact, it could well be a tagline for 60% of the franchises out there (the other 40% are led by concepts/groups, created "universes", or in YA dystopia cases >gasp< a young woman).
The question is are we excited to go another round with Matt Damon's leaping, punching, kicking, shooting, indestructable action man and the Oscar-nominated suits that are always trying to hunt him down? Let's find the answer together with our Yes No Maybe So game...
Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 11:30AM As we continue Actor Month here's Murtada on Matthias Schoenaerts & Michael Shannon.
One might ask what do Matthias Schoenaerts and Michael Shannon have in common. A hulking body (stocky Schoenaerts and tall angular Shannon). Intensity? Yes but also a certain menacing danger that sweeps through in every performance. It's a danger that comes out sexy with Schoenaerts and somewhat evil with Shannon. One never knows what they are going to do next, and that's why they are so mesmerizing to watch.
Thursday, April 21, 2016 at 10:00AM VF Hollywood Charlize Theron's son loves Emily Blunt... and Frozen
Pajiba posits that Grease 2 is the superior Grease and a feminist triumph
Gothamist On the Waterfront is coming back to movie screens on April 24th and 27th as a Fathom Event. It's rarely seen on the big screen, so go
Variety there is a Three's Company movie in the works. Because.
Guy Goald "The Garlic Awakens"
RIP
Variety famous wrestler and TV reality star Chynna, who even played superheroine She Hulk in a porn parody, is found dead in her home
Guardian remembers director Guy Hamilton who made four James Bond films (including Goldfinger) and other films like Force 10 From Navarone and The Mirror Crack'd
Oops
We forgot to share the first trailer to Oscar hopeful The Birth of a Nation. If you haven't yet seen it, here it is.
