Review: "The Tender Bar" Is Sweet, But Slight

Ben Affleck becomes a surrogate Uncle in George Clooney's latest directorial film, "The Tender Bar."

By: Christopher James

Can two movie stars squander each other’s talent? George Clooney directs Ben Affleck in Amazon Prime’s latest movie, The Tender Bar, a navel-gazing tale that takes every cheap shot possible to drum up emotion. Lucky for it, cheap shots can still be effective. Parents around the world will be charmed by the ‘70s set, decades spanning family drama. After all, Ben Affleck and director George Clooney are front and center in the movie’s marketing. Though effective in fits and starts, the wistful sentimentality curdles with time. 

Once they run out of money, single mother Dorothy Moehringer (Lily Rabe) returns to her Long Island home with her tail between her legs and her son, J.R. (Daniel Ranieri), in tow...

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Happy 25th, Tye Sheridan!

by Nathaniel R

Happy 25th birthday to Tye Sheridan today. He first won critics, audience, and Hollywood's attention as a child star in The Tree of Life (2011) and Mud (2012). Ten years on now he's shown staying power but has Hollywood noticed that he's grown up? Though the media had a brief flirtation with presenting him as a 'sexy' leading man a few years back when Ready Player One (2018) hit the screens, Hollywood is mercilessly competitive; the late 20something through 30something years are often when movie stars are made and Sheridan's particular vintage (1996) is unusually robust with actors like Paul Mescal, Tom Holland, Lucas Hedges, Harris Dickinson, Mason Gooding, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Tony Revolori, Jacob Latimore (and more) already in play. And that's not even counting the actors just a year or two younger or older OR those actors who have yet to emerge since a lot of the biggest stars in history aren't famous at the young age of 25: Brad Pitt broke out at 28. George Clooney didn't start headlining movies until he was 35. Viggo Mortensen was low profile until 39.

Still 2021 has been busy for Sheridan even if his profile is lower than some of his already-established peers...

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Review: "Ready Player One"

by Chris Feil

The pairing of godfather of contemporary pop culture Steven Spielberg with a film adaptation of Ernest Cline’s reference heavy Ready Player One sounds like one that would fit like a glove. Cline’s novel has great reverence for the Spielberg canon, not to mention a wide-ranging affection for video games, cinema, and general geekery that is greatly indebted to him as one of our greatest storytellers. The chance for the legend to riff on the likes of John Hughes and Robert Zemeckis already carries a bit of whimsy, an acknowledgement of the type of now omnipresent fan culture that he laid the groundwork for. Don’t forget Spielberg was the original movie nerd, and the opportunity to play with some of his own inspirations like King Kong should naturally allow him to approach the material with necessary affection.

But this perfectly-fit glove turns out to be an inside-out rubber one that’s spent the day scrubbing an ancient multiplex floor, and it’s our hands that end up covered in junk...

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"Ready Player" Whaaaaaat?

Chris here. Even with The Post coming to theatres this month, Spielberg's next next film is already trying to get a leg up on 2018. Yes, Ready Player One continues to botch its early promotional campaign after a much maligned first teaser and now a very eye-stretching poster. Remember a few months ago when Alicia Vikander's Lara Croft had that unfortunate neck? Well, it looks like Player's star Tye Sheridan got the same disorder in his legs.

By our rough estimate, the young actor's legs should be, oh, slightly longer than his entire abdomen. "A better reality awaits" - umm, by the looks of it... Tell us in the comments: what happened to Tye Sheridan's legs?

Posterized: Tye Sheridan

They grow up so fast *sniffle*. Tye Sheridan, the child actor revelation from Terence Malick's The Tree of Life (quite a debut) and Mud is already 19 years old and in major demand. What accounts for his mutant super power of aging rapidly is that Tree of Life actually began shooting when Tye was just 11. Malick takes forever in post production, don'cha know. Male stars don't tend to really come into their A list own until their late 20s or early 30s. DiCaprio is the grand exception to the rule but usually the ones that break out in their late teens or early 20s more commonly have career trajectories, like, oh, Chris O'Donnell. That's partially because the juicy roles for men tend to be the ones that require a 30 or 40something actor.  So it's anyone's guess as to whether or not Sheridan can build on his rather solid first five years in the movies. Are you that anyone? Care to take a guess?

While Sheridan isn't the star of X-Men Apocalypse -- the movies are STILL obsessed with making it all about Magneto, Xavier, Wolverine, and Mystique (sigh) even though we've seen that dynamic five times already (fwiw Wolverine is reduced to a cameo this time but he takes over the movie for a couple of minutes). If the franchise can ever reach for the ensemble magnificence of its source material, Sheridan would be in a great position to collect more than just a paycheck as Scott Summers, aka Cyclops, one of the most enduring and important characters in the books. (He's also onscreens right now in Last Days in the Desert which stars Ewan McGregor as both Jesus and Satan.)

How many of his 10 pictures to date have you seen? 

Next up for Sheridan, if it gets distribution, is Detour (reviewed at Tribeca), presumably more X-Men features as well as more leading roles including Friday's Child,  the crime aftermath drama Grass Stains, the Iraq war soldier drama The Yellow Birds (which he co-leads with Alden Ehrenreich), and Spielberg's sci-fi flick Ready Player One. 2017 could be the star-making year for him if two of those break out strong.