(L to R) Casey Metcalfe as Marlon, James Day Keith as Benny, Woody Harrelson as Marcus, Ashton Gunning as Cody, and Tom Sinclair as Blair in director Bobby Farrelly’s CHAMPIONS, a Focus Features release. Courtesy of Focus Features
Dean Craig directed The Estate, a raunchy escapade about two sisters, played by Anna Faris and Toni Collette, trying to win over their terminally ill aunt, played by Kathleen Turner.
It’s good to see Turner frequently absent from the screen as the aunt who is challenging to please. Her nieces try to accommodate their aunt in hopes of pleasing her and becoming beneficiaries of her wealthy estate.
Along comes the rest of the greedy family members who have the same idea. David Duchovny, Rosemarie DeWitt and Thomas Hayden are also in the film.
Craig is a British director, which lends to some good old suggestive humor.
Claire Scanlon directed The People We Hate at the Wedding based on the book of the same name by Grant Ginder. With a very talented cast, the movie follows a family during the week leading up to their half-sister’s wedding in England.
Ben Platt, Allison Janney and Kristen Bell
Tensions rise among the siblings, and it’s full of laughs and silliness with, hopefully, a lesson to learn about accepting your family.
Scanlon is also an editor who won an Emmy for editing Single-Camera Comedy Series for The Office episode: Finale. Her other movies include Set It Up and Unbreakable Kimmy.
Tommy Wirkola directs David Harbour as Santa Claus in Violent Night. An international team of mercenaries burglarizes a family compound on Christmas Eve. Everyone in the household becomes hostage as the mercenaries try to access hundreds of millions of dollars.
Santa Claus arrives to place the Christmas gifts around the tree when he stumbles on the bad guys and gets combative. He uses all the tactics he knows to save a little girl’s Christmas and her family.
Violent Night is definitely a movie you want to add to your Christmas favorites. Keep your younger kids away because of foul language and sexual references.
David O. Russell directs an all-star cast about a story in the 1930s. Three friends witness a murder and are framed for doing it. While trying to clear themselves, they stumble upon an unbelievable plot in American history.
Damien Chazelle, who directed Whiplash, La La Land, now brings us another side of Hollywood, Babylon.
Margot Robbie plays Nellie LaRoy in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.
It’s an original epic set in 1920s Los Angeles led by Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Diego Calva, including an ensemble cast: Jovan Adepo, Li Jun Li and Jean Smart.
Jovan Adepo plays Sidney Palmer in Babylon from Paramount Pictures.
A tale of outsized ambition and outrageous excess traces the rise and fall of multiple characters during an era of unbridled decadence and depravity in early Hollywood.
Set on a fictional, remote island off the west coast of Ireland, The Banshees of Inisherin follows lifelong friends Pádraic, played by Colin Farrell and Colm, played by Brendan Gleeson.
They find themselves at an impasse when Colm unexpectedly ends their long-term friendship. A stunned Pádraic, aided by his sister Siobhán, played by Kerry Condon, and troubled young islander Dominic, played by Barry Keoghan, endeavors to repair the relationship, refusing to take no for an answer.
But Pádraic’s repeated efforts only strengthen his former friend’s resolve, and when Colm delivers a desperate request, events swiftly escalate, with shocking consequences.
Written and directed by Martin McDonagh, who has worked with Farrell and Gleeson several times, he is a well-known Irish playwright and screenwriter.
“One of the things I love about Martin’s writing is that it lacks malice,” continues Farrell. “Some of the characters he presents to the audience can be incredibly malicious and cruel, and some of the events can be beyond the pale in regards to the macabre, but I never detect any maliciousness from the writer, the voice, the creator of it.”
Farrell and Gleeson worked together in the film In Bruges, which McDonagh wrote and directed. The movie permitted Farrell and Gleeson to develop a shorthand, and McDonagh wanted to bring them back together again.
Along came The Banshees of Inisherin, written especially in mind for Farrell and Gleeson to star. “As an actor, you’re looking for someone who has a unique voice, an original way of articulating thoughts and feelings and creating characters and whole worlds. It’s lovely when you come across a writer that establishes a world that has its own kind of order and sense of aesthetic (sic). Martin’s voice can be extraordinary.” Gleeson describes McDonagh as fearless. “He goes into these awful places finally, armed with compassion and empathy.”
