A "Wolf" in Men's Clothing

by Jason Adams

There is an unfinished quality to the actor George Mackay's face, as if he's a first-draft in putty, not quite defined into full features yet. That quality makes him a perfect fit for Wolf, writer-director Nathalie Biancheri's new film about a young man who believes himself to actually be, under all that pretty pink skin, a you-guessed-it wolf. Mackay naturally seems permanently half fixed, like he's trapped in the middle part in a werewolf  transformation montage -- his impermanence putting this character's indeterminate selfhood right there written over his taut cheekbones.

I wish the rest of Wolf, which sees Mackay's character of Jacob shuffled off to a mad doctor's experimental psychological retreat/prison for, you know, "his own good," worked as well as Mackay does...

Click to read more ...

Tribeca 2021: "Werewolves Within" is a Full Moon of Fun

by Jason Adams

The alchemy of the Horror-Comedy is a notoriously tricky mix -- add too many snips and snails and nobody's laughing; too much sugar and spice and you can make a person's face being torn off smell like a bouquet of roses. Neither of those extremes are necessarily bad -- I like roses! -- but you want to somehow straddle both extremes at once, goosing the gore-hounds while tickling the easily-terrified. Basically you're asking a damn lot of yourself and your audience, but when the routine really lands it'll be 10s from every judge, and Werewolves Within, Josh Ruben's new horror-comedy (based on the VR game) that just premiered at Tribeca this week, lands... well 9s. Let's say 9s.

Werewolves stars Veep's Sam Richardson (who somehow mixes cheerfulness with a deadpan dullness that always delights) as Forest Ranger Finn...

Click to read more ...

Tribeca 2021: This "Poser" Sneaks Up on You

by Jason Adams

It is said that our 20s are spent trying to figure out who we are, accumulating likes and dislikes, testing out identities like stage costumes for some great reveal, to be determined. You fake it until you make it, the "it" being some semblance of a self. It's a precarious and unsettling time for a lot of people, and Ori Segev and Noah Dixon's film Poser, screening at Tribeca, does a fine job actualizing on-screen that amorphous state of flirting with emptiness, giving us a slow-burn Single White Female for the 21st century in the process...

Click to read more ...

75th Anniversary: The Wolf Man

by Tim Brayton

This weekend marks the 75th anniversary of one of the most special of all horror classics: it was on December 9, 1941 that Universal Pictures released The Wolf Man. And in so doing, the studio that did so much to invent American horror cinema made one of its most lasting contributions to popular culture.

The Wolf Man was not the first werewolf movie (though it can be easily argued that, at the time it was released, it was the best), but its success did more to pave the way for future werewolves in film and literature than any other individual work of art...

Click to read more ...

Give Me All Your Linkin'

Me Says a gushing fan moment with Cate Blanchett. Adorable
Gold Derby rumor: David O. Russell's Joy will compete as a drama at the Golden Globes. That makes Best Actress Comedy or Musical a race between (if they campaign this way) hmmmm: Lily, Maggie, Blythe, Meryl, Sandy, Bel, Melissa and... wait, is that it? Elizabeth Banks?
Variety Suffragette's director Sarah Gavron will be honored with something called the "Juice Award" at Hamptons Fest. Sounds messy
AV Club Cinemax, perhaps emboldened by its success with The Knick, is clearly aiming for bigger original series now. They've picked up the rights to George R.R. Martin's werewolf noir Skin Trade. 
Empire yes, somehow there is going to be an Expendables 4. They will never end even though I've yet to meet anyone who thinks they come anywhere close to living up to their potential in concept! 

The Guardian profiles the Welsh foreign language film Oscar contender Under Milk Wood which stars Rhys Ifans. Yes, it's based on the same play that brought us the Liz Taylor movie
Twitter is Michelle Pfeiffer really making a movie with Keifer Sutherland named Kyra? If so, why? She has such weird unfortunate taste in projects/co-stars whenever she deigns to work
Empire so happy to report that Brie Larson is in demand enough at this point (5 plus projects on the way) that she's starting to get Jennifer Lawrence's sloppy seconds. She may take over the part in The Glass Castle which is a Destin Cretton project (Short Term 12 reunion - woot). This is very good news as she's a better actress and people, at least up to now, have not had the urge to cast her in roles for which she isn't well suited
Moviefone asks YA novelists to suggest YA novels they'd like to see on the screen. Have any of you read these?

Finally...
For those of you who are enjoying or soon to enjoy Madonna's Rebel Heart tour you should consider buying Matthew Rettenmund's amazing Encylopedia Madonnica 20th Anniversary Edition. I am trying to read it slowly rather than bingeing it in one sitting (tempting if impossible). When I first met Matthew some years ago one of the first things I said to him is "Why wasn't there a sequel to Encyclopedia Madonnica?" which is one of my fav pop culture books. The 20th anniversary edition puts the original to shame. It is MASSIVE (597 pages in the limited edition) and features loads of rare photos as well as super fan art. One of my favorite things about the book is the nifty one word quotes from nearly 100 celebrities Rettenmund asked to describe Madonna in one word that are superimposed on the edges of pages here and there like colorful graffiti. That's typical of the OCD detail of the book.

Full disclosure: I am in the book as one of the twenty-fiveish (I think?) Mega-Fans who get spotlight profiles. 

A photo posted by Nathaniel R (@nathaniel_tfe) on Oct 11, 2015 at 8:56am PDT