Beast stars Idris Elba in a pulsating, thriller-driven movie directed by Baltasar Kormakur and written by Ryan Engle.
The movie follows recently widowed Dr. Nate Daniels, played by Elba. He returns to South Africa, where he met his late wife. He brought his family to South Africa, hoping for a successful healing journey after her passing.
The doctor’s plan is to take a long trip with their daughters, played by Iyana Halley and Leah Sava Jeffries. The trip is through a game reserve managed by Martin Battles, played by Sharlto Copley.
The healing journey quickly jolts into a fearsome fight for survival when a mistreated lion by a poacher attacks them. The vicious lion stalks Daniel’s family and others because it now sees all humans as enemies.
Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, Black Adam is full of action and adventure, following Dwayne Johnson, who plays the latest DC antihero.
Touted, “the hierarchy of power in the DC Universe is about to change.”
The cast includes Pierce Brosnan, Sarah Shahi and Noah Centineo.
Collet-Serra’s directing chops include mainly horror movies, such as House of Wax, Orphan and The Shallows. He has worked with Liam Neeson in several thriller films, like Unknown and The Commuter.
Adapting author Paul Gallico’s famous 1958 novel Mrs.’ Arris Goes to Paris for the screen, writer and director Anthony Fabian create a modern-day fairy tale. The message is about pursuing your dreams, friendship’s power, and the importance of remaining true to who you are.
In post-World War II London, Ada Harris, played by Lesley Manville, earns money cleaning houses. She’s led a lonely life since her beloved husband, Eddie, went missing in action, but she’s not the type to brood over any misfortune or complain about her circumstances.
Still, the ever-pragmatic Ada sees an unimaginably lovely Christian Dior gown hanging in the master bedroom of a wealthy client. She’s surprised to feel an overwhelming pang of desire—owning something so otherworldly, so beautiful, an actual work of art — why that could change things for a person.
Ada takes on extra jobs and saves as much as possible, trying her luck at the racetrack. Ada can finally afford to pay for a Dior dress when all seems lost. She bids farewell to close friends Vi, played by Ellen Thomas, and Archie, played by Jason Isaacs.
She goes to Paris to visit the prestigious House of Dior and turn her dreams into reality. Yet when she arrives, Ada is met with a series of surprising setbacks, not least of which is Dior’s intimidating Madame Colbert, played by Isabelle Huppert, who bristles at the notion of a common charlady wearing haute couture.
Ada refuses to leave Paris without her dress, whatever obstacles come her way. Her unwavering commitment charms idealistic Dior accountant André, played by Lucas Bravo, kindly model Natasha, played by Alba Baptista, and the aristocratic Marquis de Chassagne, played by Lambert Wilson, Paris’ most eligible bachelor.
Ada soon discovers that, in changing her own life, she changes the lives of all those around her. She might even help save the House of Dior itself.
Fabian’s feature film work up until that point was mainly family dramas based on true stories, yet he felt a particular affinity for the material. Having lived in Paris as a boy and attending boarding school in England, he could appreciate both cultures at the heart of the story. “I understood these two worlds extremely well, London and Paris,” Fabian says. “I felt it was a story that I could tell in an authentic and accurate way.”
Initially brought on as a director for hire, Fabian eventually gained the rights to adapt and produce himself. He began working on an entirely new screenplay while searching for other partners to collaborate with. He turned to Carroll Cartwright, with whom he had previously worked on the feature Louder Than Words. Together, they wrote the first drafts, while prolific film and television writer Keith Thompson and A Girl with a Pearl Earring writer Olivia Hetreed gave the script a final polish.
Fabian wanted to clarify why getting a beautiful haute couture artifact became such an obsession for Mrs. Harris throughout the adaptation process. “The book gives you the bones of the story, but not the flesh,” he says. “It doesn’t really explain why Mrs. Harris wants this dress, other than in the most frivolous and superficial terms—it had to be more profound. Ultimately, I wanted to suggest that Ada Harris’ heart is healed by going on this journey. She is a widow who has put her heart on ice, and this dress is an inanimate object that she can love without betraying her husband. Somehow, the dress becomes a catalyst for opening her heart and allowing her to love again.”
Directed by James Cameron, Avatar: The Way of Water first trailer arrived 13 years after the first Avatar appeared on the screen, and we experienced the glowing vistas of Pandora.
Jake, played by Sam Worthington, and Neytiri, played by Zoe Saldana, have their own family now, involving Na’vi kids Lo’ak, played by Britain Dalton, Neteyam, played by Jamie Flatters and Tuktirey, played by Trinity Bliss. But there is also a human child, Mile Socorro, nicknamed Spider, played by Jack Champion.
The sequel offers adventures with deep dives into Pandora’s oceans and epic combats, typical of Cameron’s movies.
Producer Jon Landau told Empire, “This time around, we’re taking Jake and Neytiri and building the most universal theme of all around. Which is family. Jake comes from the human world, and Neytiri from the Na’vi world. So, they’re like a modern mixed-race couple, raising kids who perhaps feel they don’t belong to one world or another.”
The rest of the cast includes Sigourney Weaver, Kate Winslet, Van Diesel and Giovanni Ribisi.
Avatar 2 arrives in movie theaters in December 2022.
The trailer is all about Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank. Kids will not understand the jokes, and adults will have difficulty laughing. The trailer even has expletive words and tons of farting.
Ricky Gervais as “Ika Chu” and George Takei as “Ohga” in Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank from Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies, Align, and Aniventure.
Produced by Guillermo del Toro and directed by Chris Miller, the magical story of Puss in Boots continues with the feline crusader, played by Antonio Banderas, trying to restore his nine lives after using up eight.
According to the DreamWorks fandom page, the original title was Puss in Boots: Nine Lives and Forty Thieves, and it’s now Puss in Boots: The Last Wish. The change most likely occurred because the story focuses on Puss getting his last wish to regain the eight lives he spent swashbuckling through fairytale land.
Directed by Janus Metz with a screenplay by Olen Steinhauer, adapted from his bestselling novel of the same name, All the Old Knives starts on a bleak winter morning in Vienna. CIA Chief of Station Victor Wallinger, played by Laurence Fishburne, visits veteran case officer Henry Pelham, played by Chris Pine, and delivers volatile news.
Ilyas Shushani, played by Orli Shuka, the Chechen extremist who masterminded a deadly hijacking that killed more than 100 airline passengers and crew in Austria eight years ago, has been captured by the agency. During interrogation, Shushani revealed that a mole in the Vienna station provided vital intelligence to the hijackers, resulting in the catastrophic loss of life. With this new information, Henry is assigned to reopen the case of Flight 127 and identify the traitorous double agent.
But the mission means revisiting painful memories and laying traps for old friends. Even for a spy as adept at compartmentalizing his emotions as Henry is, that’s no easy task. His first stop is a pub in London, where he surprises his former superior, Bill Compton, played by Jonathan Pryce, who was second in command in Vienna during the hijacking. Long since retired from the agency, Bill considers the incident ancient history. Still, Henry points out several disturbing inconsistencies in Bill’s story, suggesting he knows far more than he’s letting on.
With troubling investigation details piling up, Henry travels to Northern California to question another retired Vienna station colleague, Celia Harrison, played by Thandiwe Newton. Henry and Celia were once passionate lovers, more than just ex-coworkers, but their relationship fell apart after the hijacking disaster.
When they meet for a meal together at a stylish cliffside restaurant in Carmel, romantic sparks reignite as the two seasoned spies reminisce about their bittersweet past. But as night falls and the dinner conversation gradually becomes an interrogation, their intimate rendezvous becomes a sly cat-and-mouse game played by two experts, where the stakes are life and death.
As his second feature film, Danish filmmaker Metz found the script most intriguing because of its powerful emotional depth and the complex ethical questions it raises. “I fell in love with the script from the moment I read it,” says Metz. “It was a very compelling story about two CIA agents meeting for dinner, one tasked with interrogating the other. Essentially, it’s a love story interwoven with a spy thriller. There’s a whodunit plot that drives the film, but Henry and Celia’s tragic relationship anchors everything.”
Metz believes the film is about people forced to make difficult choices to preserve what they care about, regardless of the consequences. “It’s a story about trying to do the right thing at the right moment,” he says. “But the dilemma for Henry and Celia is that they are in a situation where that becomes next to impossible.”
Written and directed by Mariama Diallo, Master follows three women who strive to find their place at a prestigious New England university whose frosty elitism may disguise something sinister.
Regina Hall plays Professor Gail Bishop, who was recently promoted to “Master” of a residence hall, being the first Black woman to attain the post in the prestigious Ancaster College.
Determined to breathe new life into a centuries-old tradition, Gail soon finds herself wrapped up in the trials and tribulations of Jasmine Moore, played by Zoe Renee, an energetic and optimistic Black freshman.
Jasmine’s time at Ancaster hits a snag early on when she’s assigned a dorm room that is rumored to be haunted. Things get worse when Jasmine clashes in the classroom with Liv Beckman, played by Amber Gray, a professor in the middle of her own racially charged tenure review.
As Gail tries to maintain order and fulfill the duties of a Master, the cracks show in Ancaster’s once-immaculate facade. After a career spent fighting to make it into Ancaster’s inner circle, Gail must confront the horrifying prospect of what lies beneath, her question ultimately becoming not whether the school is haunted but by whom.
As her feature film debut, Diallo first encountered the idea of a college “Master” when she was an undergraduate at Yale. Faculty members oversaw an undergraduate residence called Masters, shaping these communities’ cultural and intellectual life and helping students navigate academic and personal problems. A long-standing tradition at elite British universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, Yale adopted it in the 1930s.
Diallo recalls some of the older students downplaying the term’s connotation of enslavement. “It was very slickly normalized,” she says. “They induct you into this crazy system where they just tell you, ‘We know it sounds weird to call somebody master, but it’s nothing to do with slavery.’ And I was able to accept that in a remarkably and disturbingly short amount of time. So for my four years, it was just completely normal to have this person in your life who you would call Master so-and-so. They’re the person who you go to talk to if you’re having trouble in a class or if you’re feeling homesick or anything like that.”
But several years after graduating, Diallo ran into the former Master of her residential college and saw the title in a different light. “I was so excited to see him that I called out hello, addressing him as Master. He looked hugely uncomfortable because we were in earshot of a ton of people. It was almost like our kink was discovered. It’s a relationship that could only exist within the university gates. Anyway, we went on to have a lovely conversation. But as soon as I walked away, I told myself I had to make a film about it because it really threw into relief how bizarre that term, that relationship is. And I knew I wanted to call it Master because of the multiple layers of meaning.”
In response to student protests, Yale eliminated the term in 2016 — several years after Diallo graduated.
From that germ of an idea, Diallo drafted a screenplay that told the connected stories of three women at fictional Ancaster College: Professor Gail Bishop, the school’s first African-American Master; Jasmine Moore, a bright, optimistic incoming freshman; and Liv Beckman, an outspoken professor seeking tenure.
Directed by Baz Luhrmann, Elvis follows Colon Tom Parker, played by Tom Hanks. At the beginning of the trailer, Parker says, “There are some who make me out to be a villain.”
With the story by Luhrmman and Jeremy Doner, the screenplay is co-written by Luhrmann, Soner, Craig Pearce and Sam Bromell.
The story follows the life and career of the rock-n-roll legend Elvis Presley, played by Austin Butler. Australian, Olivia DeJonge plays Priscilla Presley.
Directed by Amy Poehler, Lucy and Desi explores the unlikely partnership and enduring legacy of one of the most prolific power couples in entertainment history.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz risked everything to be together. Their love for each other led to the most influential show in the history of television, I Love Lucy.
After his family lost everything during the Cuban revolution of 1933, Desi was a refugee from Cuba and became a bandleader, an actor, and a brilliant producer and technology pioneer. Lucille came from nothing and, with an unrivaled work ethic, built a career as a model, chorus girl and eventually as an actor in the studio system. She found her calling in comedy, first in radio.
When Lucille was finally granted the opportunity to have her own television show, she insisted that her real-life spouse, Desi, be cast as her husband. Defying the odds, they re-invented the medium on the screen and behind the cameras.
The foundation of I Love Lucy was the constant rupture and repair of unconditional love. Lucy and Desi couldn’t make it work with each other; they gave to the rest of the world.
Lucy and Desi documentaryoffers an insightful and intimate peek behind the curtain of these two remarkable trailblazers — featuring interviews with Lucie Arnaz Luckinbill, Norman Lear, Desi Arnaz Jr, Carol Burnett and Bette Midler.
Poehler’s earliest memories, as a child, of I Love Lucy are of countless chuckles coming from her family’s living room, hearing her parents’ laughter as they watched the show.
“I Love Lucy and television were almost fused,” she states. “It was as if that show came with every television.”
But it was not until she was deep in her own career that she truly connected with it — and with its stars.
“It wasn’t until I got older, and doing comedy myself, that I really understood what they were doing and was able to see the many layers to their genius. I’m inspired by the big swings that the two of them took. They came to their success with a lot of confidence.
And, because of that, they said ‘No’ to a lot of things. They took giant leaps. They left their homes and worked really hard and just kept gambling. And they didn’t play small. They were very, very brave.”
“The way into a lot of stories,” Poehler explains, “for most people, is a love story. It’s really universal. I knew I wanted to touch on important themes — the different ways they approached work, what kind of work comedy is, and what they did as pioneers for television.
But we succeed and fail based on how much we care about their love story.”
Poehler was also keen to tell the story of how Ball and Arnaz completely turned the television world upside down, Sinclair notes. “Amy came to this with a very strong point of view about who Lucille Ball was — an insurgent or a disruptor of the business.
They shot in L.A. They shot it on film; they used three cameras; they cast a man of color in the leading role for a national sitcom. This isn’t just a story of ‘funny’ — it’s a story of disrupting the T.V. business, and of a relationship that breaks and makes.”
Another key part of their story for Poehler quickly became evident. “One of the themes that I grasped onto very early on was the idea of ‘rupture and repair,’ which is something that comedy can do really well. It’s what people turn to when their own lives are chaotic. And I Love Lucy was one of the early adopters of that genre: you have a problem, let everything unravel, but, don’t worry, it’s gonna be okay.”
