Mortdecai is the story of an art dealer searching for a lost painting that links to a bank account full of Nazi gold. It stars Johnny Depp as Charles Mortdecai with exceptional support from the likes of Ewan McGregor and Olivia Munn (Magic Mike). David Koepp (Premium Rush), known mostly for his screenwriting credits, helms the director’s seat for this film.
The movie adaptation of the 1980’s TV show The Equalizer has had a long journey to the big screen, with several different stars and directors involved at various points. Jason Statham and Russell Crowe were rumored stars, while attached directors included Paul Haggis (Crash) and Nicolas Winding Refn (Drive). What we’ve finally ended up with is Antione Fuqua directing Denzel Washington in the lead role – a re-teaming of the duo that brought us Training Day, which gave Denzel an Academy Award.
Have you ever noticed that many films are released to theaters around the same time as another with a very similar theme? They are called Twin Films, or “films with the same, or very similar, plot produced and/or released at the same time in two different studios.” I often thought it was lazy; that filmmakers are running out of ideas, so they’re all trying to out-do one another with the better story.
One of the year’s most-anticipated films is Interstellar, and it is directed by acclaimed director Christopher Nolan. It will be the first film he does exploring space. He began his resume with a short film called Doodlebug, and since then, he has taken Hollywood by storm directing nine films that include Following, Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige, Inception, and the The Dark Knight trilogy.
You may know Stephen Hawking as the physicist in the wheelchair who speaks through his computer. He’s made numerous appearances in pop culture such as The Simpsons, Futurama, Last Week with John Oliver and even recorded his own ALS challenge. He doesn’t have ALS though; he has motor neurone disease (MND) that affects the control of voluntary muscle activity like speaking, walking and even swallowing.
Guardians of the Galaxy broke records this year when its soundtrack reached number one, making it the first soundtrack in history to reach number one with no new songs on the album. This got me thinking about great soundtracks and the use of popular music versus composition. There’s a time and a place for both, and sometimes a time for none.
Every Monday Film Inquiry publishes the movies that are opening in cinemas! This week: The Identical, God Help The Girl, Kelly & Cal, Frontera and the IMAX re-release of the 1994 film, Forrest Gump.
The function of a trailer is to lure you into watching a certain film. It does this by giving you the most attractive, cherry-picked scenes. My purpose here is filler:
Time travel can be a tricky plot device. Stories can defy their own time travel rules or become so convoluted that you struggle to follow it at all. With the hundreds of movies that feature different aspects of time travel, it can also be difficult to bring a fresh, original idea to the screen.
When the majority of people are asked for their opinions on the topic of ‘best film directors’, a usual set of names are mentioned. While individuals will naturally have personal and less predictable choices, there is a good chance that at least one of their suggestions will be from a set of list of collectively-decided greats: Kubrick, Hitchc*ck, Scorsese and the like.
Antonio Banderas surprises the world by taking the leap from perpetual Latin lover to science fiction bad-ass, who’d have thought! In Autómata, Earth’s ecosystem is about to collapse. Man-made robots protect the lives of the people still alive, but when one of these robots overrides a key protocol (that protects human life), Jacq Vaucan (Banderas), a Blade Runner-type figure, is ordered to locate the robot and eliminate it.
One of the best qualities you find in the cinephile world is a film that doesn’t take itself so seriously. Truly, what better way to do that than with puppets? Drugged up puppets that rob convenience stores.
David Fincher’s newest directorial outing is the thriller-drama Gone Girl, an adaptation of the novel by Gillian Flynn. Ben Affleck plays Nick Dunne who’s wife Amy, played by Rosamund Pike, goes missing. As is often the case, everyone points their finger at the husband, but there may be more to this mystery than meets the eye.
There is a certain point where our love of literature meets our love of cinema. It happens when a screenplay is so well-written, so insightful, that we can quote from it as we would from any well-respected book. Words that make us think, ponder the world around us, criticize the society we live in, analyze the direction our lives are headed towards, or simply inspire us to take action.
I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t lured me into watching a movie or two: the old “Based On A True Story” tagline. The Conjuring, a recent horror release that is based on the true story, involves possessed dolls and physical apparitions and it’s not necessarily something everyone would believe to be true, so how factual can the story be?