25th Anniversary: Danny Boyle's "Shallow Grave"

by Anna

Twenty-five years, a new British filmmaker made a dark splash at Cannes. Danny Boyle’s directorial debut Shallow Grave, which would become a significant sleeper success in 1995, opens with flatmates David (Christopher Eccleston), Juliet (Kerry Fox) and Alex (Ewan McGregor) looking for a new boarder (and subsequently trolling the prospective candidates). They settle on Hugo (Keith Allen) but he dies from a drug overdose within hours of moving in. Then the trio  find a suitcase full of money under Hugo’s bed, and that’s where the plot (and the meaning behind the film’s title) really kicks off.

Roughly a decade of award-winning films from the likes of Stephen Frears and David Attenborough, Boyle came and turned British cinema as a whole on its ear...

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Tweetweek: Cliff Top Screenings, 100 Acre Wood realizations

Have you ever rapelled down a cliff or climbed up one? I've only down the former (so fun) but I applaud anyone who went to this screening... "What a thrill" (said in Marcia Gay Harden Oscar winning voice). Lots more after the jump...

2,000 feet, 2,000 people, 4 hours of hiking. The most impossible screening of #MissionImpossible Fallout. Thank you all for coming! I wish I could have been there. pic.twitter.com/ufi1FkP6KI

— Tom Cruise (@TomCruise) August 2, 2018

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Review: "Christopher Robin"

by Chris Feil

Off in the Hundred Acre Wood, Winnie the Pooh and friends haven’t changed all that much over the decades. Our Christopher Robin however is all grown up in the real world, having lost his father at a young age before fighting in the war and never returning to visit his childhood daydream oasis. Like the rest of us, he’s grown rigid in adulthood while the rest of the beloved characters remain made of plush.

With Ewan McGregor taking on the adult Christopher, his namesake film presents something as soft as his friends in both its demeanor and its substance. Unlike its recent live action Disney brethren, this film follows its own narrative and is free to explore the characters as it sees fit. And yet it chooses the most obvious one, turning Christopher into an overworked businessman devoting more of his energy to his job than his wife and daughter. Send in Pooh’s implacable chill to play savior to his once kneesocked companion’s soul.

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YNMS x 2: Mowgli and Christopher Robin

by Nathaniel R

grrrr. oink. hsss. squeak. 'oh bother'. oohoohahah. and other animal noises.

The multiplex has a serious animal infestations coming up with Christopher Robin and yet another adaptation of The Jungle Book called Mowgli coming up in the next handful of months. Have you caught their trailers?

Let's break them down with our Yes No Maybe So™ practice after the jump...

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Beauty vs Beast: Follow That Bird

Jason from MNPP here, delicately fondling every cane in sight in honor of the birth of one of my favorite all-time scene-stealers, Mr. Peter Lorre, who was born on in this day in the year 1904. I, like many of you, probably first knew Lorre without actually knowing him, via his animated likeness always popping up for a quick n creepy gag in Looney Tunes; funny enough my mom wasn't rushing to show me Fritz Lang's masterpiece M as a child. But once I did see M... wowza. And Casablanca. Double wowza! And Hitchcock's original The Man Who Knew Too Much -- wowza squared! And on and on... but for today's "Beauty vs Beast" let's pit him against that other favorite of the Looney Tunes animators, his co-star in John Huston's 1941 classic noir The Maltese Falcon...

PREVIOUSLY I'm sure some of you are still wearing your Nicole Kidman party hats - the celebration never ends! - but let's take stock of last week's Moulin Rouge competition oh right shocker Nicole Kidman won. She took 58% of your vote over poor suffering Ewan. But y'all were torn. Said Sawyer:

"The Hardest One Ever. As usual, it's Nicole by a nose."