Scottish actor/heartthrob/all-around nice guy James McAvoy returns to screens this weekend in The Conspirator, director Robert Redford's true-life tale of a Southern woman charged with conspiring to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. As her uneasy, Civil War-hero public defender Frederick Aiken, McAvoy navigates the scorched terrain of American life immediately after Lincoln -- an era of Washington paranoia, family ruin and, for Aiken, anyway, principles worth fighting for.
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After 40 years in the horror movie business, Wes Craven has almost certainly seen it all. What's more, he's practically done it all -- whether confronting taboos with aplomb and with a social conscience (Last House on the Left), creating one of the most memorable monsters of all time (Nightmare on Elm Street), or turning the horror genre in on itself (Scream). But after this week's Scream 4, a sequel-skewering sequel notoriously hampered by production woes and Craven's own public airing of grievances over a lack of script control, will the veteran filmmaker finally be ready to throw in the towel on this particular series?
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Michael Angarano has been acting since the age of six, so you could take his collective filmography, as he jokes, as a "well-kept home video" of his life captured on screen. For much of that documented life he's been a steadily-rising young performer amassing a wide range of credits (Almost Famous, Sky High, The Forbidden Kingdom, Gentlemen Broncos), but 2011 marks an important turning point; with roles in Max Winkler's Ceremony (in theaters), Gavin Wiesen's Homework, Steven Soderbergh's Haywire, and Kevin Smith's Red State, Angarano is in the midst of carving out a fascinating adult career for himself.
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Kim Cattrall's latest, Meet Monica Velour, is about what happens after women are chewed up and spit out of the adult film business. It's a tale with obvious parallels for many actresses Cattrall's age in Hollywood -- parallels that touch on themes of clinging to something from the past or, as Cattrall puts it, "To play a character that I'm known for, for the rest of my life?" So does that mean she won't play Samantha Jones again?
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From its lengthy introductory shot of a nude protagonist fussily mixing feminism, art and vanity to a cryptic, haunting closing shot I shouldn't spoil, a number of factors make writer/director Zeina Durra's feature debut The Imperialists Are Still Alive! among the year's most fascinating films.
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BAFTA-winning director Joe Wright could have stuck to his bread-and-butter area of expertise, the lush period drama, a domain in which his films have notched multiple Academy Awards just six years into a feature filmmaking career. But after making Pride & Prejudice, Atonement, and the subsequent misfire The Soloist, Wright flipped the script and re-teamed with the teenage actress he'd previously directed to an Oscar nomination -- 16-year-old Saoirse Ronan -- on Hanna, a dizzyingly kinetic action film about a girl assassin on a mission of self-discovery.
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Dennis Quaid is just one of those actors. You know what I mean. You've been watching his movies your entire life, reveling in his gravitas and Cheshire Cat grin. This weekend he returns to theaters in the feel-good/comeback sports biopic, Soul Surfer, and while we've all seen the actor in this mode before, this time there's a catch: It's not his comeback.
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Movieline didn't set out to discuss the finer points of creature genitalia at length with award-winning director David Gordon Green, but standing opposite the filmmaker and a plate of cookies at the tail end of his Your Highness press day, all bets were off. Possessed of a laser focus and a restless energy, Green has carved an eclectic career path for himself ranging from sensitive dramas (George Washington, All the Real Girls) to raunchy comedy (HBO's Eastbound & Down, Pineapple Express). Featuring pedophile gags, stoner jokes, ridiculous medieval accents and the aforementioned Minotaur schlong, Your Highness -- co-written by friend and star Danny McBride -- is decidedly not one of those highbrow affairs.
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It's a very busy time in the life of Vera Farmiga -- and that's even before you factor in the amount of press she's been doing lately for back-to-back releases Source Code and now Henry's Crime. Consider the growing family, the directorial debut (Higher Ground) and the Oscar-nominated actress's natural, insatiable curiosity for what's next. But one thing at a time.
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Chris Hemsworth, the Norse god Thor himself, revealed recently that he helped brother Liam rehearse for his Hunger Games auditions by reading the part of Katniss aloud. Liam eventually landed the part of Gale, one of two young men in love with Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence) in Lionsgate's 2012 adaptation of Suzanne Collins's YA novels, but lest you assume that means the elder Hemsworth is unequivocally on Team Gale, think again. Talking with Movieline he explains his ties to Liam's future on-screen rival, Josh Hutcherson, and how they've landed him firmly in the middle of the Peeta-Gale conflict.
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Three years after he shot to fame by terrorizing Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson in Twilight, Cam Gigandet finds himself once again in a vampire flick -- only this time the bloodsuckers are really nasty, and Gigandet is one of the good guys. As a young sheriff in the upcoming Priest, Gigandet plays foil to Paul Bettany's Jedi-like warrior, both searching for a missing girl in the vampire-infested wasteland. Gigandet met with Movieline to discuss Priest and more after he and his fellow filmmakers debuted first look 3-D footage from the film at WonderCon.
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Much of the early buzz around Tron: Legacy (out today on Blu-ray from Walt Disney Home Entertainment) centered around Clu, a motion-captured character featuring the face of a much-younger Jeff Bridges. But Bridges' co-star from the original Tron (also making its DVD debut today as part of the multi-disc Legacy set), Bruce Boxleitner, also had himself younged up so that his titular character of Tron could reappear in the sequel as well. And while Tron: Legacy may not have raked in the megabucks Disney had hoped, it's a smart and exciting sequel/reboot that's far more entertaining than you'd expect a sequel/reboot to be.
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Sixteen-year-old Saoirse Ronan earns her action star stripes this week as the titular assassin of Joe Wright's thriller Hanna, a hyper-charged, globe-trotting fairytale about a feral teen sent out into the world on a mission of vengeance. With an infectious score by the Chemical Brothers to punctuate her journey, Ronan fights through droves of enemies with a fierce precision that belies her youth and petite stature -- and, as Hanna discovers friendship for the first time in her life, so too does Ronan convey a blend of preternatural maturity and childlike naiveté rarely found in performers her age.
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It was an agonizing enough process just getting cast in Tarsem's Immortals, stars Luke Evans and Henry Cavill told Movieline over the weekend at WonderCon, where audiences got their first look at the November fantasy pic. But the real struggle, they say, was in reaching and maintaining the physique required of their roles as Zeus and Theseus, respectively -- characters for whom godlike perfection was a prerequisite. But hey, no pressure!
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If Screen Gems' upcoming post-apocalyptic thriller Priest feels a bit familiar to you, there's a reason: the film reunites star Paul Bettany with director Scott Stewart, with whom he made last year's avenging-angel apocalypse pic Legion. Produced on a relatively modest budget, Legion made $67 million worldwide but fared poorly with critics and, Bettany admits, suffered from its limitations. With Priest, however, he and Stewart aim to surpass their own benchmark and give audiences something that they haven't seen before: a 3-D post-conversion job worth the price of admission.
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