Review: The Cloverfield Paradox

By Spencer Coile 

Like the first two Cloverfield films, The Cloverfield Paradox premiered with plenty of hype surrounding it. After several delays, it was rumored to be picked up by Netflix which proved true when during Super Bowl LII, Netflix announced the arrival of The Cloverfield Paradox immediately following the game. 

Fans of the series were in a tizzy, counting down the hours before they could enjoy the latest entry. The marketing push for Paradox was as ambiguous and mysterious as the first two films which is a good thing. Like Cloverfield (2008) and 10 Cloverfield Lane (2016), it is best to go into The Cloverfield Paradox knowing little about the plot...

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Dennis Quaid Still Has "The Right Stuff"

by Nathaniel R

Dennis Quaid as "Gordon Cooper" in THE RIGHT STUFF (1983)

Have you noticed how many movie stars are doing audiobooks these days? (I have a friend who keeps raving about Armie Hammer's reading of Call Me By Your Name.) But it's not just current movies with complimentary audiobooks. There's a new audiobook out this week for Tom Wolfe's 1979 nonfiction bestseller "The Right Stuff" about the astronauts of the Mercury Space Program in the 1940s and 1950s. Dennis Quaid is doing the audiobook honors this time and he famously co-starred in that book's Oscar-favored adaptation in 1983.  The Right Stuff (1983) won four craft Oscars in its year (splitting the below-the-line prizes with Ingmar Bergman's Fanny & Alexander) and if you haven't seen it you really should. It's quite good.

Here's a little bit of Dennis's familiar comfy gravel voice reading the book... sadly it's not a scene about his character but a scene involving Fred Ward's character Gus Grissom.

on this day in movie related history...

Victor Garber as Thomas Andrews in TITANIC (1997)Happy February 7th! Especially if its your birthday.

We realize that not doing these posts every day possibly defeats the point but after realizing that two sort of infamous men were born on this day who both were featured in Best Picture winners, we kinda sorta had to start this again.

Birthdays and film-related anniversaries after the jump...

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Soundtracking: "Pretty Woman"

by Chris Feil

Decades later, it’s still easy to fall for the charms of Pretty Woman - despite maybe being a problematic fave for how it softens the struggles of sex workers. That feel-good fantasy is aided by a pleasing adult-contempo soundtrack, and one that half-comments on the situation as it charms us. It’s a modern variation on the Pygmalion/My Fair Lady archetype and packed with musical moments, so it makes sense that it is on its way to a stage musical treatment. Go West’s “King of Wishful Thinking” makes for a buoyant opening number of wishful love to start our hearts fluttering, before fading into equally crowd-pleasing tracks that dance around the love story’s circumstance.

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YNMS: Life of the Party

Seán here with an Awards Season Palette Cleanser to help you see beyond March 4th and onward to early summer. And what better way to note the passing of the seasons than with a Melissa McCarthy movie? Life of the Party, directed by McCarthy's husband, Ben Falcone, and written and produced by the two of them is set to be a scud missile of McCarthy's talents. But for every Spy there's a Tammy (and The Boss, and um, Ghostbusters) but by now there's no going back on the fact that a Melissa McCarthy film is something of a modern day event picture.

In Life of the Party, McCarthy plays Deanna Miles, a recently divorced suburban Mom who decides, decades later, to go back to college and finally get her degree. The catch? She ends up in the same class as her daughter! Uh-oh! It feels a little obvious when writing it down, but with McCarthy deeply involved in the project you can't feel anything but optimism...

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