There's a heartbreaking relevance to this week's historical drama The Bang Bang Club, based on the true story of four photographers who risked their lives to cover the brutalities of civil war in apartheid-era South Africa; like photojournalists Tim Hetherington and Chris Hondros, both tragically killed this week in Libya, two of the four founding members of the so-called club fell victim to the violence they fought to bring to the world's attention. Days before Hetherington and Hondros died, Movieline spoke with actor Taylor Kitsch about the responsibility of portraying real-life South African photojournalist Kevin Carter and the risks Carter and his colleagues took, emotionally and physically, in the line of duty.
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Zach Braff returns to the big screen this week -- sort of -- in the new drama The High Cost of Living. Technically it's a VOD release (premiering this week via Tribeca Film) that will make its way to select theaters next month, but that's all the better for audiences, really -- any opportunity to check out its dark, romantic, gritty charm is one worth taking advantage of.
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Though it may not look like it outside our windows at the moment, it's that time of year again in New York -- when the birds chirp, the flowers blossom and the international film community descends for the 10th annual Tribeca Film Festival. Among the visitors set to attend: Adrien Brody, a native New Yorker returning to the festival with the much-anticipated Detachment.
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The forthcoming romantic comedy Something Borrowed, based on Emily Giffin's bestselling novel, has more at stake than just living up to the expectations of book's devoted fan base. It's also the long-awaited first completed effort by the producing team at 2S Films -- an upstart shingle co-founded by a certain double-Oscar winner you may have heard of. No pressure!
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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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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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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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In the new HBO documentary His Way (premiering tonight at 9 p.m. ET/PT), legendary entertainment impresario Jerry Weintraub finally gets his Hollywood close-up -- more than four decades after launching a career that intersected those of Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and countless other figures he helped guide to spotlights of their own.
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At the age of 19, Logan Lerman (The Patriot, Jack & Bobby, Gamer) has been acting for over a decade and later this year will take on the most iconic character of his career -- one of the most recognizable heroes in literature, even: D'Artagnan in Paul W.S. Anderson's Three Musketeers. Lerman made his first trip to WonderCon with footage from the October 2011 3D action pic in tow and sat for a quick chat with Movieline about Anderson's insane-looking take on the Alexandre Dumas novel, the reportedly in-the-works sequel to Percy Jackson and the Olympians, and a little-known YouTube user known as monkeynuts1069.
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