Teenage is as rebellious a film as the territory it covers. Based on punk author Jon Savage's 2007 book Teenage: The Creation of Youth Culture 1875-1945, Matt Wolf's documentary eschews the talking heads and Chyroned dates that dominate the genre to immerse the moviegoer in a visually and aurally sumptuous history lesson. more »
If you think of Penn Badgley in terms of Dan Humphrey, the character he played for five years on the CW Network's Gossip Girl, prepare to have your world rocked. The actor is about to make the transition from television to film look easy with a big performance in a small film: Greetings From Tim Buckley, which opens in New York and Los Angeles on May 3 and in other select markets later that month. Badgley plays Jeff Buckley, the remarkably talented musical artist known for his album Grace and a much-adored interpretation of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah", who, like his singer/songwriter father in the movie's title, died much too young. more »
A longstanding gig will keep Sandra Bernhard from attending the Tribeca Film Festival's closing-night screening of The King of Comedy on April 27, but it's not like she needs her memory jogged. The comedienne recalls that making Martin Scorsese's prescient and oh-so-dark 1982 comedy about a deluded stand-up comic (Robert De Niro) who kidnaps his favorite talk-show host (Jerry Lewis), was a "coming-of-age experience that left me a changed person." more »
A word of advice: Don't go to see Brandon Cronenberg's unsettling Antiviral if you're getting over a cold or have recently undergone a medical procedure that involved the withdrawal of blood or a skin biopsy. The 33-year-old filmmaker's debut feature makes such effective use of hypodermic needles and flesh samples that I left the screening room on unsteady feet, feeling like I'd just donated a pint of my own plasma. But do go see the movie. more »
If Evil Dead isn't your idea of fun, then may I suggest a film about evil-in-the-making that also opens on Friday? It's called Simon Killer, and it stars charismatic Brady Corbet as a young American up to no good in Paris. Simon appears to have traveled to the City of Lights to recover from a bad break-up, but, as this tense, visually striking film uncoils, it becomes apparent that he's suffering a breakdown that will have lethal consequences. more »
It's Feb. 14, when men and women across this land bend over and submit to that cruel Hallmark dominatrix known as Valentine's Day — enduring exorbitantly priced flowers, overbooked restaurants and unreasonable expectations for the sake of love and romance. And that means it's the perfect time to check out what filmmaker Christina Voros has to say about human bondage. Voros is the director of Kink, a documentary produced by longtime collaborator James Franco that takes a mesmerizing behind-the-scenes look at Kink.com, the San Francisco-based company that operates a number of websites devoted to BDSM porn. (That stands for "Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism" if you haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey.) more »
Hey girl, did you know Los Angeles is big enough for two Ryan Goslings? Meet Richie Calhoun, the adult actor who's the porn industry's go-to Gosling equivalent since he starred in the XXX parody of The Notebook, Diary of Love. Calhoun — at present, a smart blonde with big blue eyes, a degree from a top-15 U.S. News & World Report college and an address in L.A.'s very hip Echo Park neighborhood — is such a perfect match for Gosling's lover/fighter/poet shtick that he was asked to play him again for the adult remake of Crazy Stupid Love (aka Crazy in Love). more »
Twenty-six directors devise terrible ways to die, from A to Z, in the horror anthology The ABCs of Death. And in his first foray into the horror-film world, TV animation veteran Jon Schnepp (Metalocalypse, The Venture Bros.) dives headfirst into chaos with "W Is For WTF," a stoner's fever dream that mashes zombie clowns, a mysterious chem trail, animated depravity, and Schnepp himself into the most random and, yes, WTF-inducing segment of the bunch.
Movieline spoke with Schnepp about his "W Is For WTF" (behold the exclusive image above!), how he lobbied producer Ant Timpson for the slot, why he poured his own money into his ABCs of Death short, and what he learned from his time editing Adult Swim's Space Ghost Coast To Coast at the start of his career. He also updated us with the latest on Grimm Fairy Tales, his ambitious Heavy Metal-esque animated project. (Interviews with all 26 ABCs of Death filmmakers will be available to read on The ABCs of Death Tumblr page.)
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Sebastián Silva's Crystal Fairy was the first film I caught at the Sundance Film Festival, and by the time I left Park City, I still hadn't seen a performance that measured up to Gaby Hoffmann's stunning, ego-free portrayal of that movie's title character. Hoffmann first appears onscreen dancing with goofy abandon and spouting New Agey talk that leave little doubt she will be the butt of the movie's jokes for the next hour and a half. But then she steals the show by literally and emotionally stripping herself naked over the course of the film, revealing her character to be much more complex, damaged and vulnerable than those first scenes suggest. more »
One thing I can say about Don Coscarelli's movies is they never remind me of something I've already seen. The Tripoli-born, South California-raised Coscarelli makes mind bending, original films that start trends but never follow them. For instance, there's the not easily classified 1979 horror classic Phantasm, which spawned three sequels and pre-figured the A Nightmare on Elm Street franchise. His 1982 sword-and-sorcery crowd pleaser, The Beastmaster, was played so often on HBO that the pay-cable's call letters were said to stand for "Hey, Beastmaster is On." And his 2002 comedy horror film Bubba Ho-Tep, is a contemporary cult masterpiece that has some very smart things to say about celebrity culture and aging out in a world that worships youth. more »
Arnold Schwarzenegger warned us he'd be back, but the ex-Governator's big action comeback as a small-town border sheriff in The Last Stand fizzled over the weekend with a tenth-place box office finish. Shame, because The Last Stand also marks a milestone for director Kim Jee-Woon, who makes his English-language debut with the tongue-in-cheek contemporary Western after building an eclectic resume in his native Korea including the horror pic A Tale of Two Sisters, the Eastern-Western The Good, The Bad, And The Weird, and the crossover thriller I Saw The Devil. Movieline spoke with Kim (via interpreter) about dipping his toes into Hollywood and his plans to put a Korean twist on Inrang, his upcoming adaptation of the anime Jin-Roh: Wolf Brigade.
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In 2009 Chris Colfer rocketed to stardom as the out and proud Kurt Hummel on Fox's Glee, a role that nabbed him two Emmy nominations, a Golden Globe, and the adoration of legions of fans worldwide. This week the 22-year-old actor, singer, New York Times bestselling author, and screenwriter makes his feature film debut in Struck By Lightning, in which he stars as an ambitious small town teenager killed by a bolt of lightning, a coming-of-age story which he also scripted.
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Trey Songz has already written a song about fear — literally. His track "Don't Be Scared" soothes a hot chick who's afraid of her carnal desire for some sweet, sweet loving. Of course, calming a girl into bed is easier than calming a girl while you're both running from a blood-lusted maniac. But Texas Chainsaw 3D director John Luessenhop knew Trey Songz could handle the challenge when he saw the thrice Grammy-nominated R&B singer float down from the ceiling during the BET Awards and seduce Solange Knowles and the crowd; the next day, Luessenhop called his agent and asked if he could send him the script for the horror sequel — if Songz could control a stage, maybe he could command a screen.
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2012 brought us two whacked-out limousine-set films from auteurs bearing all the markings of future cult classics. But while Leos Carax's Holy Motors received universal critical praise, David Cronenberg's Robert Pattinson-starring Cosmopolis left critics a little more divided, although how anyone could dislike a film featuring an R-Pattz prostate exam is one of life's great mysteries.
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Though a Paramount release, Flight did not take the trajectory of a typical studio concept plucked from an internal idea bin. Screenwriter John Gatins began working on what would become the feature starring Denzel Washington and directed by Robert Zemekis earlier last decade on his own. While still new to Hollywood, Gatins, who first hit the scene as a writer on sports pics including Summer Catch and Hard Ball, sobered up. He took that experience and his fear of flying, to quietly craft the story that would evolve into Flight.
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