Talking to empty chairs aside, Clint Eastwood still goes down as one of the greatest living American filmmakers. This doesn’t dismiss the current slump he has been in the past couple years (Jersey Boys, Hereafter, J. Edgar just to name a few). This 2014 holiday season he’s set to release his latest film: American Sniper.
The film is an adaptation of the best-selling autobiography of the same name by former Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle. Steven Spielberg was initially attached to direct the film, but bowed soon after. In comes Clint Eastwood to take up the director’s chair with Bradley Cooper starring as Chris Kyle (also producer on the film).
The film has already made it’s premiere at the AFI Fest with a limited release on Christmas Day 2014.
American Sniper will have a general release date of January 16, 2015.
At this year’s Hall H over at Comc-Con this past summer a trailer was shown that figuratively blew off the roof at the convention. It was the trailer for all the upcoming films for 2015 and beyond that everyone ended up geeking up over. It wasn’t the sizzle reel for the upcoming Age of Ultron (though it seems that was a close second). It wasn’t the brief tease of Batman v. Superman (though from people I know who went the teaser went a long way in removing doubts about the film).
No, the film the trailer was all about was George Miller’s return to his post-apocalyptic world inhabited by one of the original badasses of the 1980’s: Max Rockatansky aka Mad Max.
Yes, we are going to have sandwiched between Avengers: Age of Ultron and Star Wars: The Force Awakens a new Mad Max film (4th in the series) with Tom Hardy in the title role. The title to this latest entry in the series will be Mad Max: Fury Road.
The Comic-Con teaser for Fury Road whetted the appetite and this latest teaser trailer released by Warner Brothers today will just feed the thirst for post-apocalyptic vehicle mayhem.
Mad Max: Fury Road will be set for a May 15, 2015 release.
I’m not sure if the 5th Terminator film is a prequel or a sequel. Time travel and paradoxes and all that jazz sure make it difficult to figure that out.
Now, what we do know is that Terminator: Genisys (whoever came up with that title should be shot) will take things even farther than the first film which is suppose to kickoff a divergent timeline that makes the first four films a moot point.
So, this means that Terminator: Genisys may be both prequel and sequel, but also a reset of the whole franchise. See what I mean about confusing.
Here’s to hoping that screenwriters Laeta Kalogridis and Patrick Lussier have a better handle on all this jumbled time travel and resetting stuff.
Terminator: Genisys is set for July 1, 2015 release date.
Perhaps hoping to avoid getting overshadowed by that upcoming Star Wars trailer that’s apparently going to be released this weekend, Universal Pictures has released the full trailer for Jurassic World two days early!
It’s such a big deal that a teaser has even been released for the trailer! Now, the trailer for Jurassic World will be released on Thursday but until then, this teaser provides some tantalizing clues as to what may actually be in the trailer. Will the trailer live up to the teaser?
I’ve not been buying that many games this year, but this is one little title from EA’s BioWare I know I must have and play before year’s end. That title is the third game in their fantasy rpg series Dragon Age.
Dragon Age: Inquisitor will mark the arrival of BioWare onto the nextgen platforms (Xbox One, PS4) and looks to combine what was good with the first two titles in the series while trimming off what went wrong with those two.
The game already looks gorgeous from just clips and gameplay videos shown leading up to this release. If the title looks to expand on the world-building that has been laid down by the first two titles in the series then I should expect to be playing this game for at least a minimum of 80 hours, if not more.
Now, I just need to decide on race and class for my character.
I know, I know. You scoff and you have every reason to do so. After all, Sandler is best known for appearing in Razzie-winning films like Jack and Jill and That’s My Boy. Sandler’s film career has been so lowbrow that, when Amy Dunne mentioned the misery of being forced to watch Sandler movies, audiences watching Gone Girl knowingly nodded and thought to themselves, “She may be a crazy but she knows her movies…”
And yet, occasionally, mixed in with all of the crap, you’ll come across a film that actually requires Sandler to act and play a character and he usually does a pretty good job at it. It’s the talent that you see in films like Punch-Drunk Love, Spanglish, Reign Over Me, and Funny People that makes it so frustrating that Sandler has devoted so much of his career to things like Grown-Ups 2.
When Sandler stops trying to make everyone laugh and actually lets his guard down, he has the ability to be a surprisingly good actor. And, though it’s hard to believe now, a lot of film bloggers — like me — were convinced that 2014 would be the year that Sandler would prove that he was capable of more than just winning Razzies.
He had two films scheduled to come out and both of them were directed by “serious” filmmakers. And Sandler got some good reviews for his performance in Jason Reitman’s Men, Women, & Children but the film itself was critically reviled.
As for Sandler’s other 2014 film, Thomas McCarthy’s The Cobbler opened to mixed reviews at the Toronto International Festival and, as a result, it probably will only get a very limited release in the early months of 2015.
However, I’m still looking forward to seeing The Cobbler. Thomas McCarthy’s previous film — Win Win — was one of the best of 2011 and the film’s premise — a cobbler discovers that he can assume anyone’s physical appearance and life simply by putting on their shoes — sounds like it could be promising, especially is Sandler plays to his natural sadness as opposed to going for easy laughs.
“I know you mean well. You want to protect the world, but you don’t want it to change. There’s only one path to peace…your extinction.” — Ultron
Marvel has released a new extended version of the teaser trailer they released a couple weeks ago. While it’s pretty much similar to the first teaser trailer this extended version has a new intro with Ultron in his initial form confronting the partying Avengers in Avengers Tower. The voice-over by James Spader as Ultron also sounds much different in this trailer than the first. We also get more lingering shots of all the Avengers from Iron Man all the way to Hawkeye rather than the rapid-fire cuts we saw in the first teaser.
May 2015 cannot come soon enough.
Avengers: Age of Ultron is set for a May 1, 2015 release date in North America.
Ridley Scott has been hit-or-miss (mostly misses) of late and response to the trailers and news about Exodus: Gods and Kings doesn’t seem to be helping.
Yet, despite all the indifference to Scott’s upcoming Biblical epic (and calls of whitewashing) I am quite intrigued about this take on the Book of Exodus. Will it have the pageantry of Demille’s The Ten Commandments (both of them)? Or will it be another CGI-overload? Or will it be a piece of entertaining pulp a la Gladiator? I guess we will find out this Holiday season.
Exodus: Gods and Kings is set for a December 12, 2014 release date.
District 9 introduced Neill Blomkamp to the world. People bought into that film hardcore and were soon wondering what he would be doing next. Some fans of Blomkamp who have been following his career since he was first chosen by Peter Jackson to helm the now defunct Halo film thought he now had the leverage to get the film made. This was never going to happen.
The follow-up to District 9 was Elysium and the visuals that was slowly released for the film and having Matt Damon star in it gave it some major buzz and hype. The finished product was more than just a tad disappointing.
Was Elysium a hiccup?
People will find out on March 6, 2015 if this was indeed just a blip on the rising career of Neill Blomkamp as his third feature film, Chappie, will arrive in theaters.
