Tag: original features

It’s the start of a new year, which means it’s time to mark our calendars for all the upcoming new movie releases we’re excited about. Some of us might still be catching up on all the awards hopefuls now that Oscar season is rolling around (What do you mean you haven’t seen Oppenheimer yet??) but for those of us who like to stay up to date on these things, we have a list of the 12 most exciting new movies coming out in 2024.

The dual strikes and some inevitable calendar shake-ups have turned 2024 into a great year for movies already. Finally, finally we’ll see the culmination of Denis Villeneuve’s most ambitious space opera Dune, whose new release at the start of March is growing closer and closer. And that’s not the only sequel we’re getting this year: a new Deadpool movie, a new Joker movie, a new Planet of the Apes movie, and, somehow, a new Gladiator movie are bringing some of cinema’s most iconic characters back to the big screen.

Even Mad Max: Fury Road is getting a Furiosa-centric prequel with even more sand-soaked car fights. Aside from those, there are new horror films from Robert Eggers and Jane Schoenbrun, a new sci-fi odyssey from Bong Joon-ho, and a crime drama where Kristen Stewart dates a bisexual bodybuilder. Read on for more of our most anticipated movie releases of 2024.

READ MORE: The Best Box Office Bombs of 2023

There are few action movie actors as instantly recognizable as Jason Statham, the steely-voiced Brit whose baleful gaze and skill at stunt work make him one of the most sought after action actors working today. Often slipping into his trademark Cockney accent, Statham brings a street level machismo that grounds even the most out-there plots. You always know what to expect with a guy like Statham, and even so, he’ll often surprise you.

A former diver and sportswear model, Statham was discovered when Guy Ritchie was casting for his first feature, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and needed someone to play a small time crook making money hawking his stolen wares on street corners. Having done a little bit of that himself in his actual life to make some extra money, Statham got the job, launching a robust film career and a frequent actor-director partnership.

Following his almost instant success and worldwide acclaim, Statham became the type of action movie actor every action movie wants to work with, casting him in everything from psychedelic high-concept crime films like Crank to hysterical parody movies like Spy and everything in between. He developed driver Frank Martin into a franchise character with The Transporter, and ran away with the show when he menaced Dom Toretto and his familia in Furious 7. Here, we dive into his ten best films, and come back up with a lot of guns, a lot of cars, and a lot of how-did-he-do-that spin-kicks to the head.

READ MORE: Every Fast & Furious Movie Ranked From Worst to Best

For most actors, great acting means making your audience feel as if you’re truly feeling the emotions you portray onscreen. But sometimes those emotions, wherever they’re drawn from, break the bonds of fictional storytelling and make their way into the real world. Acting is an intense trade, and sometimes when two people pretend to be in love, the feelings become genuine.

Without disregarding these actors’ talent, sometimes it’s even more entertaining to watch a movie when you know the two beautiful stars had real feelings for each other, either before they started filming, during production, or after. Hollywood is full of such stories of celebrity whirlwind romances that mirror the work the stars do in their day jobs, and there’s no better bait for the tabloids to latch onto. When we watch one of these movies, it’s hard not to feel like we’re peering in on some strangers’ lives.

And what better way to celebrate some real life romance than with a few romantic comedies? Here, we’ve chosen ten famous relationships borne from ten classic rom-coms, everything from Hollywood royalty who have basically been together forever, to short-lived romances rekindled years later, to flings that only lasted a few months, but live on in our memories. These are our favorite Hollywood couples whose relationships, just the teeniest bits, can be glimpsed by us plebeians for a couple of hours in the movies we love watching again and again.

READ MORE: Actors Who Criticized Their Own TV Shows

Movie trailers are important. They’re the first moving images audiences get to see of a film, and as such are meant to generate the appropriate amount of hype. Cutting together trailers is an under-appreciated art form, designed to distill a movie’s essence into a couple of minutes, showing just enough to get people interested without giving away all the good parts.

We all remember the truly great trailers: The first Fellowship of the Ring teaser, “THE FEEL BAD MOVIE OF CHRISTMAS” trailer for The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the Mad Max: Fury Road trailer that blew the roof off of Comic Con 2014.

Trailers are meant to go pretty hard — getting people excited is advertising’s job — but sometimes they go a little too hard, promising something we never end up getting in the finished film. You never forget your first theatrical disappointment, and great trailers for bad movies contribute a lot to that feeling of progressing disappointment that blankets the theater as people in the audience start realizing, oh no, the thing we thought would rule actually sucks.

Still, it’s fun to look back on what could have been, so for this list we’ve selected ten of the best trailers for ten of the most disappointing movies of the past 20 years, from a James Bond stinker to everyone’s second-least-favorite Star Wars movie and everything in between. Why watch something bad for two hours when you can spend just two minutes watching something great?

Quantum of Solace (2008)

It’s partly because Casino Royale was such a hit that Daniel Craig’s Bond follow-up Quantum of Solace looked so sick, but it also has a lot to do with its promotional material, which made it look like a vengeful action-thriller we never got. The trailer for Quantum of Solace does what all trailers for doomed movies always do: It sold all the good bits, relying heavily on snappy pieces of dialogue and that first, great fight scene to convince us this one was going to be at least as good as the first. Mathieu Amalric’s villain treads the appropriate line between scary and gross, Olga Kurlyenko is the picture of an action heroine, and when the twangy rock cover of the James Bond theme kicks in near the end you’re ready to buy your front row tickets. It’s just a shame the trailer itself isn’t two hours long.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

It’s never a great sign when trailers show pretty much the whole movie, and the trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hits you with so much plot and lore you feel like you’ve already seen the whole thing. Shia LaBeouf’s Sam Witwicky is heading off to college; some weird Transformers stuff gets in his brain and turns him into Zachary Levi from Chuck (remember Chuck??); somehow, Megatron returns and the Decepticons hunt Sam down; Optimus Prime says some cryptic stuff about keeping secrets; robot fights ensue. It’s exciting, and also kind of exhausting. Crucially, this trailer also leaves out Mudflap and Skids, the irritating “comic relief” Autobot twins who are possibly the worst additions to the whole franchise.

The Last Airbender (2010)

Given how awful M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender turned out to be, it’s kind of crazy how incredible its first teaser was. It doesn’t show any of the movie (a good strategic choice), instead relying on vibes, impressive VFX scenery, and James Newton Howard’s fantastic soundtrack. Noah Ringer’s Aang does some flashy airbending moves inside an Air Temple to blow out some candles (foreshadowing the funniest moment in the film) while the camera slowly zooms out to reveal the fleet of Fire Nation battleships and legion of soldiers climbing up the rocks ready to start a fight. If you’re a fan, everything looks good so far. What the trailer does not show is the terrible acting and perplexing casting choices that wrecked the rest of the movie.

Man of Steel (2013)

This trailer for Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel will go down in history as one of the best movie trailers of all time, regardless of the quality of the product it was advertising. If there is a Criterion Collection just for trailers, this one will be in it. The clips weave together a story about an outcast seeking his purpose on a planet that wasn’t meant to be his home, while a terrifying alien villain hunts him from afar—in other words, a great movie! It also owes a lot to Hans Zimmer’s moving, rousing soundtrack—a deconstruction of the original Superman theme. (Warner Bros. were clearly confident about this one: the first teaser was scored to The Fellowship of the Ring score.) Say what you will about Snyder’s work, but he is a pro at crafting Images: shirtless Henry Cavill saving people from a burning, sinking ship; a red cape against a frozen landscape; Superman breaking the sound barrier. Just listen to Kevin Costner’s voice crack when he says, “You are my son.” Doesn’t it make you desperate for a better movie?!

Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

The reason Fifty Shades of Grey was a bad movie wasn’t because of its subject matter or its source material (which is, admittedly, terrible). It’s because its leads have zero chemistry together, despite the fact that they’re consummate professionals Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan, two utterly charming actors in any other scenario. The trailer for the movie expertly sidesteps this giant roadblock using a sexy, slowed-down cover of Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love” (sung by Beyoncé, of course) as the background beat for a sweeping, sensual love affair. The movie, in which a mumbling waif is tossed into the world of hardcore BDSM by a cringey businessman who talks like a robot, just couldn’t measure up.

Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)

As great as Andor is, we can’t let ourselves forget that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story was kind of bad. It definitely did not deliver on the hype of its trailers, every one of which is fantastic. The teaser alone, timed to the haunting blasts of a Star Destroyer alarm, sets up a darker side to Star Wars (and ends on that sick shot of Jyn Erso in Imperial tactical gear). But it’s the following trailer that really gets into the meat of the movie and includes the best shots and the coolest lines of dialogue — Ben Mendelsohn saying, “POWAH,” Donnie Yen saying, “The Force is strong,” Forest Whitaker’s breathless “Save the Rebellion! Save the dream!” The mood is perfect, setting up an action-packed sci-fi heist we know is successful, even though its main characters are doomed.

Geostorm (2017)

The trailer for Geostorm also commits the cardinal sin of giving away most of the movie in two and a half minutes, but in cases like these—idiot-brain disaster blockbusters—that’s normally a good thing. We don’t really care about the plot of a movie like Geostorm, we just want to see the titular Geostorm. The trailer, set to a “trailerized” cover of “The Time Has Come” by the Chambers Brothers, gives us a quick run-down of what’s going on: In the future, the world’s weather is controlled by a network of satellites that drop bombs on hurricanes. Gerard Butler is an astronaut stuck up in space while the network is hijacked and the planet’s weather spins itself up into a superstorm. Andy Garcia plays the President. Iconic “where have they been lately” stars such as Jim Sturgess and Abbie Cornish are also there. It all sounds great, but the movie itself is immensely boring.

Mute (2018)

The gap between the anticipation the trailer for Duncan Jones’ Mute drummed up and the quality of the final product is a vast abyss. Jones heads who loved Moon, Source Code, and even Warcraft were hyped for a noir detective story set in a neon-lit Blade Runner future, starring Paul Rudd in a mutton chop mustache, Justin Theroux in a blond wig, and Alexander Skarsgard as a weird guy with a blue-haired girlfriend. The trailer has great vibes, a gorgeous color palette, and a dreamy, melancholy tone that the movie simply lacks: the plot is hard to follow, the characters are awful, and every contrived “twist” just makes things worse for everyone, especially the audience.

Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)

It’s a bold choice to set a trailer for a Godzilla movie to Debussy’s “Clair de lune,” but Warner Bros. did just that with Godzilla: King of the Monsters, and it honestly feels appropriate. The trailer captures the awe and beauty of a world run by Titans the way the movie should have, giving all of its beastly stars their own cool introductions. Come for the alternating shades of fiery Rodan red and atomic breath blue, stay for Vera Farmiga playing a monster-obsessed blockbuster villain. The movie ended up being kind of dumb and overcomplicated, but at least we’ll always have that crescendo shot of Mothra opening her sparkly wings.

Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw (2019)

The trailer for Hobbs & Shaw is hype in a bottle—and, incidentally, much more coherent than the actual movie. You basically get the whole thing here: frenemy hijinks between Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, Idris Elba as self-described “Black Superman,” characters using cars to do things cars shouldn’t ever do, a bona fide Māori haka led by Johnson and Roman Reigns, Vanessa Kirby looking cool and dangerous. It looks awesome, released at the height of the late 2010s Fast & Furious resurgence, but the movie itself is just off. The action is bad, the constant quippy dialogue is vexing, and the story is dumb, even by F&F standards. Still, Dwayne Johnson saying “The music’s already started” when the music has, indeed, already started is just the kind of inspired stuff this franchise was built on.

The Worst Movies By 20 Great Directors

It’s like one of Billy Wilder’s characters said in the final scene of one of his best movies: Nobody’s perfect.

Nobody is. And sure enough, Billy Wilder wasn’t either. As great a director as Wilder was — and he made more stone-cold masterpieces than almost any Hollywood filmmaker in history — he wasn’t immune to a creative or commercial failure here or there. It happens to the best of us.

That was surely frustrating for Wilder, not to mention for the people who funded his occasional flop. But for the rest of us non-geniuses, a great director’s missteps can be humanizing, even refreshing. It’s comforting to know that the greatest artists are imperfect as well. And so we now turn our attentions to a list of imperfections from brilliant filmmakers — 20 bad movies from 20 exceptional directors.

These choices are not ranked; the picks are listed alphabetically by filmmaker. (Then again the #1 film may well be the worst movie by a Hall of Fame caliber movie talent; it is a real stinker.) No one whose name appears on this list should take it personally. In fact, take it as a compliment. To appear in this article at all, you had to make some darn good movies through the years. Just not in these very specific and isolated cases…

The Worst Movies By 20 Great Directors

READ MORE: Directors Who Cast Their Own Children In Their Movies

There’s Method acting, and then there’s physically transforming yourself into an almost unrecognizable person for a movie role. Actors are getting beefier now that action movies and superhero flicks have turned the simple act of “playing a character” into a sport, and getting a personal trainer and a dietician and hitting the gym for three to six months before production starts has become the norm across the industry.

There are some actors who have gone even further to achieve their impressive physiques, getting so bulky in order to play certain roles that seeing their ripped bods becomes the main reason to go see the movie. From boxers to superheroes to supervillains to alien-fighting super-soldiers, celebs have done it all, hulking out for the purposes of art and inspiring hundreds of “How to Work Out Like Wolverine” articles in the process.

But none of that happens overnight. Attaining this kind of muscle mass is hard work, and everyone has a different system for getting the kind of shape that makes their inevitable post-workout Instagram posts go viral. For this list, we looked at the most impressive and mind-boggling transformations actors have made to go from zero to hero and inspire the rest of us to maybe hit the gym once in a while. Because we’re focusing on wild transformations, we did not include celebs who were already famously ripped (sorry Arnold). And please do not try this at home—no one gets the Star-Lord bod without a lot of Hollywood movie magic.

READ MORE: Actors Who Returned to Iconic Roles Decades Later

There are few things better than a movie that doesn’t overstay its welcome, clocking in at a tight two hours or anything under. It’s the average length of time a person can sit in a seat without having to stretch their legs or use the bathroom, and we as a culture have come to expect that our filmic entertainment keep to that understood rule.

There are, however, exceptions to that rule that prove that sometimes movies need to take a little bit more time to let us explore their worlds. There has been plenty of talk lately about how movies ought to be shorter by far (and with two decades of bloated studio blockbusters pushing two and a half hours, we don’t necessarily disagree), but sometimes longer really is better. To prove our point, we’ve selected ten of the most beloved movies that clock in at longer than three hours, and yet still manage to keep our eyes glued to the screen the entire 180 minutes (or sometimes way more than that). Don’t be afraid to sit down for the three-plus hour film, and don’t be afraid to get up if you need to—as James Cameron once said, “They can see the scene they missed when they come see it again.” Exactly right.

READ MORE: The Best Low-Budget Films Made For Under $1 Million

Every Martin Scorsese Movie, Ranked From Worst to Best