Directed by Kat Coiro, Marry Me arrives packed with original songs by Jennifer Lopez and global Latin music star Maluma, making his feature-film debut.
Lopez plays musical superstar Kat Valdez who is half of the sexiest celebrity power couple on Earth with hot new music supernova Bastian, played by Maluma. Together they have a hit song called “Marry Me.” It climbs the charts as they are about to wed before an audience of their fans. The ceremony will stream across multiple platforms.
Enter a divorced high-school math teacher, Charlie Gilbert, played by Owen Wilson. He’s dragged to the concert by his daughter Lou, played by Chloe Coleman and his best friend, played by Sarah Silverman.
Kat learns seconds before the ceremony that Bastian has cheated on her with her assistant. She has a meltdown on stage, questioning love, truth and loyalty. Her life seems insubstantial or delicate as it falls away. She locks eyes with Charlie, a stranger — a face in the crowd.
Kat marries Charlie on stage instead. Sure, it’s a moment inspired by insanity.
The love story begins as an impulsive reaction to an unexpected romance. Of course, living in different worlds, forces conspire against them. Can two such different people bridge the gap and build a place together where they both belong?
The rest of the cast includes John Bradley, Michelle Buteau and Utkarsh Ambudkar.
Directed by Nora Fingscheidt, The Unforgivable follows Ruth Slater, played by Sandra Bullock, who just got out of prison for killing someone.
She re-enters society and tries to connect with your younger sister. Her only chance of redemption is the connection with her sister, who she was forced to leave behind.
Her sister’s adoptive mother, Viola Davis, wants nothing to do with Ruth. But, her husband, played by Vincent D’Onofrio, seems to feel she has redeeming qualities and goes against his wife’s wishes.
It’s based on the story of the Yorkshire award-winning drama Unforgiven, a mini-series about a young woman released from prison for murdering two police officers. Now, she wants to find her younger sister.
The Netflix movie also stars Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, Aisling Franciosi, and W. Earl Brown.
Co-directed by Reid Carolin and Channing Tatum, Dog is a buddy comedy. Tatum also stars as former Army Ranger Briggs. With Lulu, a Belgian Malinois dog, they follow misadventures as two former Army Rangers. Paired against their will on the road trip of a lifetime and buckled into a 1984 Ford Bronco, they race down the Pacific Coast hoping to make it to a fellow soldier’s funeral on time.
Along the way, they’ll drive each other completely crazy, break a handful of laws, narrowly evade death, and learn to let down their guards to have a fighting chance of finding happiness.
Also starring in the movie are Jane Adams, Kevin Nash, Q’orianka Kilcher, Ethan Suplee, Emmy Raver-Lampman, Nicole LaLiberté, Luke Forbes and Ronnie Gene Blevins.
Directed by Ric Roman Waugh, National Champions begins three days before the college football national championship game.
Stephan James as LeMarcus James, J. K. Simmons as Coach James Lazor, and David Koechner as Richard Everly in NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. Photo credit: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of STX Films
The star quarterback LeMarcus James, played by Stephan James, and teammate Emmett Sunday, played by Alexander Ludwig, ignites a player’s strike declaring they won’t compete until all student-athletes are fairly compensated.
J. K. Simmons as Coach James Lazor and Kristin Chenoweth as Bailey Lazor in NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. Photo credit: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of STX Films
With billions of dollars on the line, the stakes could not be higher as their head coach, played by J. K. Simmons.
Andrew Bachelor as Taylor Jackson and Tim Blake Nelson as Rodger Cummings in NATIONAL CHAMPIONS. Photo credit: Scott Garfield/Courtesy of STX Films
Various stakeholders, played by Lil Rel Howery, Tim Blake Nelson, Andrew Bachelor, Jeffrey Donovan, David Koechner, Kristin Chenoweth, Timothy Olyphant and Uzo Aduba, race to protect or destroy the prevailing collegiate athletics system.
Directed by Simon Curtis, Downton Abbey – A New Era arrives in March 2022. With the screenplay written by Julian Fellowes, its creator, the movie will be just as good, if not better, than its predecessor.
This is the extraordinary true story of eccentric British artist Louis Wain, played by Benedict Cumberbatch. Wain’s playful, sometimes even psychedelic, pictures helped to transform the public’s perception of cats forever.
CLAIRE FOY and BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH in THE ELECTRIC LIFE OF LOUIS WAIN
Photo: Jaap Buitendijk
Moving from the late 1800s through the 1930s, we follow the incredible adventures of this inspiring, unsung hero as he seeks to unlock the “electrical” mysteries of the world and better understand his own life and the profound love he shared with his wife, Emily Richardson, played by Claire Foy.
Co-written and directed by Will Sharpe, The Electrical Life of Louis Wain follows the extraordinary life of Wain, who painted incredible images of cats. These paintings inspired the public to view cats as domestic pets instead of feral animals that eliminate rodents.
Sharpe describes the challenge of capturing Wain’s inner world as most exciting. “I immediately felt a connection to his pictures, which are full of humor and delightful little details about daily life, but also, sometimes, seemed to have an undercurrent of restlessness and worry, or even sadness.”
“I wanted to take the spirit of those pictures — the wild colors and patterns, the funny tableaux, even the psychedelia — and to fold it into the world of our movie. The more I read about his life, the more I was struck by his courage in facing multiple challenges and how heroically he seemed to face them. It felt like an epic Odyssean life, and I knew there was a story here that could be really uplifting, transporting, and, hopefully, relatable for many people.”
Sharpe’s primary roadmap through the artist’s life came with the love story between Wain and Emily when developing the script.
“I thought the way that the love story was structured, in a slightly unusual and on the surface of it in an unfortunate way, left space for a lot of beauty to be mined,” Sharpe says.
Louis met Emily when she was the governess to his sisters. They had quite a controversial relationship and subsequent marriage. “They had to fly in the face of convention, and there would have been a lot of pressure on them not to be together,” says Sharpe
With the death of his wife so early in his life, Louis Wain’s story also deals with grief, another facet of the love he holds for Emily, which acts as a catalyst for realizations he makes during his later years in life.
“Grief is a theme in this movie, and all of it is tied together under the umbrella of love,” explains Sharpe. “What Louis realizes is that the reason he felt pain is because he loved Emily and that his love for her and Peter (the cat) has inadvertently helped him to appreciate the love that was around him—his friends and family and the people who enjoyed his work.”
Sharpe wanted to present Emily as the person who helped Wain learn what love is — so that he had something to reconnect with at the end of the story.
Cumberbatch feels that Wain’s is a moving story, who leaped at the chance to take the leading role. “I was drawn to him because of his artistry. I also found him incredibly persuasive in a very gentle way. And the fact that he was so talented and lived through so much tragedy, I found that whole journey just extraordinary.”
The rest of the cast includes Andrea Riseborough, Toby Jones, Sharon Rooney, Aimee Lou Wood, Hayley Squires, Phoebe Nicholls, Adeel Akhtar, Asim Chaudhry, Richard Ayoade, Julian Barratt, Sophia di Martino, Taika Waititi, Nick Cave and Olivia Colman.
Directed by Angus MacLane, Lightyear is part of the Toy Story series. Chris Evans voices Buss Lightyear. The franchise’s popularity sparks a space ranger to the front as the cadet goes to infinity and… beyond. China’s talented Mu Le’en also stars.
I saw a post on Facebook, so it might not be accurate. That said, the story is about the hero, Lightyear. Thus, the Lightyear toy became a product.
Written by Christopher Borrelli and directed by David Hackl, Dangerous follows ex-con Dylan Forrester, played by Scott Eastwood. He attempts to reform his life outside of prison by seeing a psychiatrist, played by Mel Gibson.
In the trailer, Gibson’s portrayal of the psychiatrist is accurate, having psychotic episodes. Because Dylan’s brother dies under mysterious circumstances, he risks his freedom by taking off to find answers about his brother’s death.
The eccentric psychiatrist stays in touch by phone to ensure his patient remains stable. In fact, it is the psychiatrist who has lost his marbles, which is fun to watch in the trailer. During this time, Dylan is sidestepping the FBI agent, played by Famke Janssen, and confronting a gang of mercenaries who are also in the same pursuit as Dylan. The leader of the thugs, played by Kevin Durand, is hellbent on discovering the secrets. So, Dylan has to use his criminal mind to survive his latest pursuit.
The thriller also stars Tyrese Gibson.
Thank you, Collider, for some of this information.
Directed by Michael Bay, Ambulance takes place in Los Angeles within a single day. A husband and father, played by Abdul-Mateen II, tells his war buddy, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, he’s desperate because his wife has a severe illness that costs $231K. To solve the problem of getting enough money for her surgery, Jake’s character suggests they rob a bank.
The bank heist doesn’t go as planned, and they hijack an ambulance driven by a paramedic, played by Eiza Gonzalez, that’s transporting a police officer in critical condition.
Bay helms this movie as a remake of the Danish film of the same name directed by Laurits Munch-Petersen in 2005. The project passed several directors’ hands with the original script of having the two bank robbers brothers. The story changed when Mateen came on board, and the two brothers became fellow soldiers.
Garret Dillahunt, Keir O’Donnell, A Martinez and Moses Ingram also star in the movie.
Sorkin has taken one of America’s funniest and most beloved TV couples, Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, and turned it into a poignant story for a film. The Ricardos first appeared in the iconic sitcom I Love Lucy, which premiered in 1951.
In front of our TV sets, we saw a quintessential dizzy redhead and the charismatic Cuban bandleader, delighting record-breaking audiences each week. They’d see Lucy’s hare-brained schemes and hilarious antics.
Behind the scenes was a different story. Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz faced problems that could have ended the successful show and their marriage. Kidman talks about Lucille Ball’s career and portrays her, “As an actress, she never really got a break when she was younger. Movies were not her métier. But that is part of what made her resilient. She, with Desi’s support and protection, reinvented herself as a comedy star. But it was all so tenuous and could be taken away by a couple of cheap headlines. That is still very relevant today.”
Written and directed by Aaron Sorkin, Being the Ricardos follows Lucille Ball, played by Nicole Kidman, and Desi Arnaz, played by Javier Bardem, as they face a crisis. They face the devastating fact that they most likely will end their careers and marriage. Lucy and Desi must deal with the impending threats of shocking personal accusations, political smears, and cultural taboos.
The film clip is like the trailer, but we see more of Kidman as Lucy and Bardem as Dezi.
We go behind the scenes of one of the most popular TV shows of our time, revealing a glimpse of the couple’s complex romantic and professional relationship. During one critical production week of their groundbreaking sitcom, “I Love Lucy,” we go into the writer’s room, onto the soundstage and behind closed doors with Lucy and Desi.
Having two Oscar winners play the lead roles of two influential personalities in the entertainment industry must be a dream come true for Sorkin.
The cast includes Jake Lacy, J. K. Simmons, Nina Arianda, Tony Hale and Alia Shawkat.
Sorkin says, “Javier made it clear he wanted the part. And he is simply irresistible. I didn’t need to be told he’s a great actor. We were finishing casting during the COVID lockdown and he was so winning, even during Zoom meetings. That quality was essential for Desi because we asked the audience to accept such bad behavior from him. Until the day he died, he was intensely in love with Lucille Ball, but he came from a culture that defines manhood very narrowly. It was hard for Desi to be a second banana, and that ultimately killed their marriage.”
Bardem calls Sorkin’s script “a love letter to two resilient, creative human beings dealing with serious problems and trying to remain united through them,” adding, “It is a journey of pleasure and joy and laughter — a lot of laughter. There are great comic moments in it. But there are also dramatic, emotional moments that show that these people who were so loved and admired were just a couple of human beings with flaws — as we all are.”
The actor says it was typical for the cast to perform five or more pages of the writer’s notoriously precise dialogue daily. “There are always two or three or four things happening at the same time,” he says. “As a director, Aaron likes to work fast. He knows what he wants, which is a great thing, but he leaves you the room to play with it. And he gives you a lot of layers to work with.”
Despite the many personal and professional successes the couple achieves, Desi’s philandering threatens to destroy the couple’s marriage at the peak of their fame. “He wanted to help Lucille, protect her, hold her — not only because she was the star of the show but because she was his wife, the mother of his kids and an amazing, creative mind,” says Bardem. “But there were many things that he could have done better.”
It was Arnaz’s ambition and versatility that the actor says provided him with the most inspiration. “When we play real people, we want to get as close as we can to reality, but there’s a moment where you have to let that go,” he believes. “You have to express what the person is going through, not how he looks or speaks. Desi had a motor inside of him that constantly pushed forward, pushed not only himself but the show and the whole Desilu company.”
For the role of Arnaz, one of the rare Latinx talents to achieve stardom in television’s early days, the filmmakers cast Academy Award winner Javier Bardem. The actor had pursued the role for years before the film was green-lit.
Bardem describes his co-star, Kidman, as “generous, caring, organic, fun to work with, fun to watch, inspiring — and she makes it all look easy. She gives you everything, so you don’t have to hold anything back.”
