Following a stellar year in which she starred in two Oscar-nominated films (Alice in Wonderland, The Kids Are All Right), Australian actress Mia Wasikowska continues to impress in Jane Eyre, a moody and gorgeously haunting adaptation of the Charlotte Brontë classic helmed by director Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre). The 21-year-old commands the screen as the titular heroine, an unloved orphan-turned-headstrong young governess who falls for her employer (Michael Fassbender) as sordid secrets threaten to destroy her chance at happiness. Challenging material for most young actresses, but what did you expect from a girl who grew up watching Kieślowski?
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Shiloh Fernandez makes Amanda Seyfried swoon with his bad boy ways in Catherine Hardwicke's Red Riding Hood, but when Movieline met with the 26-year-old actor in Los Angeles he revealed his softer side with a favorite moment from a romantic '90s-era classic -- and turned on the charm with a touch of good, old-fashioned flattery. "I read Movieline!" he exclaimed before diving into a nostalgic round of My Favorite Scene.
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In Every Day (out this week on DVD and Blu-ray from Image Entertainment), Liev Schreiber stars as Ned, a TV writer balancing the arrival of his ailing father-in-law (Brian Dennehy) into his home, an openly gay son (Ezra Miller) who's ready to start dating, a frazzled wife (Helen Hunt) on her last nerve, and the amorous attentions of a sexy co-worker (Carla Gugino). When I sat down with Schreiber in L.A. in January, he was coping with snowstorms back east that were preventing him from getting home to his longtime companion Naomi Watts and their two children. Despite the weather issues, the affable Schreiber -- who's made a name for himself in both indie and mainstream Hollywood movies alongside a thriving Broadway career -- had plenty to say.
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Juliette Binoche's latest film, Certified Copy, offers a bit of everything for the discriminating cinemagoer: the famously exact and entrancing mise en scene of Iranian master Abbas Kiarostami; the sanguine folkways of Tuscany; humor, sophistication and not just a little mindbending heartbreak in the tale of an Englishman (opera veteran and film newcomer WIlliam Shimell) and Frenchwoman (Binoche) meeting for the first time (or are they old lovers finally dissolving?); and of course Binoche herself, an international icon who nevertheless needed nearly 15 years to fulfill her goal of working with Kiarostami.
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The last time I spoke to Josh Radnor, How I Met Your Mother was in that strange bubble of being a cult favorite, but the cast was left biting their nails every every year waiting to learn if CBS had picked the series up for another season. Times have changed: Not that Radnor doesn't still have strong feelings for the show on which playing Ted Mosby -- the "I" in the title -- made him a recognizable face. But it's apparent that the energy and passion once exclusively set aside for the hit comedy has been firmly reassigned to his film career -- namely the new movie Happythankyoumoreplease, which Radnor wrote, directed and stars in.
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Beneath the wanton, CG-aided destruction caused by invading alien hordes in this week's sci-fi actioner Battle: Los Angeles there lies a deeply human core: the bond among soldiers under siege, banding together in the face of certain extinction. And as the naive Pfc. Shaun Lenihan, 26-year-old Canadian actor Noel Fisher is the face of Battle: LA's humanity -- a too-young Marine thrown into the harrowing chaos of war, separated from his unit, with only his rifle to cling to as terror sets in.
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Back in 2006, Topher Grace wrapped production on That '70s Show and transitioned seamlessly into the '80s. That is, the Connecticut-raised actor starred in (and executive produced) an '80s romantic comedy opposite Teresa Palmer, Anna Faris and Dan Fogler called Take Me Home Tonight. And this weekend, after a few years and a few distribution switch-ups, the film is finally being released.
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When Cary Fukunaga's moody adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre hits theaters this month, Mia Wasikowska's titular heroine might not be the only one seen onscreen making restrained-but-passionate googly eyes at everybody's favorite man-crush, Michael Fassbender. Even the equine species, it seems, is susceptible to Fassbender's dashing good looks and charm, as one enamored horse very ardently demonstrated on the set of Jane Eyre.
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The great tragedy in Drive Angry 3D's lackluster opening last weekend isn't that the B-movie homage didn't make more money, but that more people didn't get to see William Fichtner steal the show as The Accountant, the no-nonsense supernatural CPA from hell doggedly tracking Nic Cage's every move on earth. Fichtner, one of Hollywood's most beloved character actors, gives a master class in added-value acting in the film, which he discussed with Movieline last week before musing further on muscle cars, The Godfather Part II, and his soap opera beginnings.
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After watching the fairly savage new horror film, Bereavement, I didn't know exactly what to expect when I met its director, Steven Mena -- but I was fairly certain there would be at least three piercings on his face. Instead, Mena is about as down-home and wholesome in appearance as possible. The kind of guy who you would imagine delivering you milk in the 1950s with a wink and a smile, not the guy who directed a movie where a woman is roasted alive over an open flame.
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It's already shaping up to be a huge year for Teresa Palmer. Last month, the Australian actress kicked serious alien ass as a mystery assassin in the Michael Bay-produced I Am Number Four, and was rumored to be dating Zac Efron. This weekend, Palmer officially emerges from the shadows of her Twilight doppelgänger Kristen Stewart with her leading role in the 80's romantic comedy Take Me Home Tonight co-starring Topher Grace.
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The Oscars are over and we are collectively in the early 2011 humdrum of banal, Nicolas Cage is Number Four's Unknown Roommate-type movies. Rango may or may not be on your radar -- for reference, it's not the one with the birds; that's Rio -- but what it brings is a break from the predictability of not only the movies that are usually released around this time of the year, but of recent animation movies in general. Directed by Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean films), Rango is a gritty surprise, and not just because it seamlessly weaves in a Hunter S. Thompson reference.
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When Ghostface starts picking off teens and townsfolk again in April's Scream 4, expect 22-year-old Chicago native Nico Tortorella to land somewhere near the top of your list of potential killers. Tortorella, who once compared his character Trevor to Skeet Ulrich in the original, played coy with his character's true nature with Movieline but was refreshingly candid when it came to addressing widespread rumors of behind-the-scenes drama, as well as his close ties to director Joel Schumacher and the appeal of dueling YA properties Mortal Instruments and The Hunger Games.
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One of the few (if not the only) widely held highlights of Oscar night arrived at the beginning: The short film featuring hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco bouncing from dream to dream, Inception-style, eventually burrowing into Alec Baldwin's subconscious and inhabiting sequences from Best Picture nominees like True Grit, The Fighter, The King's Speech and Inception itself. The film set a near-perfect tone for light irony and even lighter hosts that the show would not sustain, but at least we have filmmaker Troy Miller to thank in part for getting the broadcast off on the right foot.
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Reason #1 why we love Lea Thompson, who just landed a new ABC Family pilot, Switched at Birth: She's the girl we all wanted to be in the '80s. Reason #2: She's like the estimable honey badger when it comes to real talk about her old Red Dawn co-star turned Qaddafi of Hollywood, Charlie Sheen.
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