Review: Charlie's Angels (2019)

Box office and reviews have been tough on the new Angels. I guess today the contrarian corner is a theme here at TFE. Tony likes it! - editor.

by Tony Ruggio

We'll start with where I'm coming from: I’m no fan of the original series. The early-Aughts adaptations were mostly forgettable save a dance or two from Cameron Diaz and Sam Rockwell. But these 2019 Angels are surprisingly fresh and fun. It’s an IP brought back from irrelevant hell and updated with verve.

About the three new Angels. Elizabeth Banks is clearly in love with Kristen Stewart, and who can blame her? Stewart is a charisma machine as the weird, spunkiest Angel of the bunch. She's so good you almost wish she took movie star roles more often. You also forget there was once a time when she got gruff for playing mopey all the time. Those days are long gone...

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Zombieland: Double Tap

by Michael Frank

Zombieland: Double Tap doesn’t waste time telling you that you’re watching a zombie movie. The Columbia Pictures logo comes to life, fighting off multiple would-be enemies, leading to a Deadpool-esque opening credits sequence. It’s not new by any means, but it reminds you why you like zombie movies in the first place: they’re fun as hell. 

The rest of the film follows its opening: an enjoyable movie-going experience with a lack of plot, a lack of originality, yet just enough movie stars, inside jokes, and heart to make it worthwhile. Double Tap follows our leads from a decade earlier, Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson), Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg), Wichita (Emma Stone), and Little Rock (Abigail Breslin), as they traverse the new-look world that’s still full of zombies. The actors themselves have aged nicely as well, with Harrelson, Eisenberg, Stone, and Breslin all maintaining prolific and award-winning careers. If anything, they’re more likeable than they were 10 years ago, an difficult feat for a cast to pull off. They bring their full arsenal of charisma to their roles in Double Tap, giving generous performances to a film that cares more about its world than its characters...

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Links: Joker, Spidey, Clint, Kristen, and more

New Yorker  “movies I can’t watch anymore because my climate anxiety is too real”

Filmmaker Laura Dern will get a tribute at the Gotham Awards on December 2nd. Your move Jennifer Lopez

Coming Soon - Because Warner Bros can't help themselves with Clint Eastwood flicks, The Ballad of Richard Jewell is joining the already crowded December calendar of film releases. Eastwood’s last Oscar-smash was American Sniper (2014) though the past three pictures (Sully, 15:17 to Paris, The Mule) have not interested Oscar much at all.

After the jump Kristen Chenoweth, Spider-Man, Joker and more…

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Posterized: Promotions to Film for TV Casts

With Downton Abbey (2019) in theaters today and already threatening a sequel let's talk movie spin-offs of TV shows. TV shows have been adapted into feature films for as long as we can recall, but up until the 21st century it was more common for feature films to be adapted into TV shows.

Examples of TV series getting their own theatrical film outing with the original cast intact dates back to, we think, Dragnet (1954) and Batman The Movie (1966), both of which had one theatrical release during their TV runs. But it was fairly rare until recently and it has usually only happened after a television series has wrapped. A large part of this becoming more common obviously has to do with the narrowing gap between how audiences experience TV and film. On a less obvious and more theoretical level we suspect its due to the even newer cultural trend of immediate / perpetual nostalgia. It used to be that there had to be a bit of distance before the populace got collectively teary-eyed with longing but... no longer! 

Batman got a movie in the summer of 1966, even though it has just premiered on television in January of that same year.

You can now be wistful for things you experienced just the year or even a few months before and demand that they come back to you in the closest approximation possible. 

Let's look at some examples of this increasingly popular trend leading up to Downton Abbey (2019). How many of these spinoffs have you seen? The posters are after the jump...

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Over & Overs: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

In this new series, members of Team Experience wax rhapsodic on films they've never been able to stop watching. Here's Lynn Lee...

Conventional wisdom holds that Raiders of the Lost Ark, the O.G. Indiana Jones, is also the best Indiana Jones.  Yet the Indy installment I love the most is Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which I’ve watched more times than I can count and can practically quote from beginning to end.  It’s one of my cinematic comfort food go-tos. I can count on it to put a smile on my face and – perhaps more surprisingly – a tear in my eye.

I suspect my deep affection for The Last Crusade is at least partly rooted in the fact that it was the first Indiana Jones movie I saw, and the only one I ever saw in a theater...

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