Directed by Sam Esmail, I am excited about this Prime Video Series. Homecoming is a mind-bending psychological thriller. The story focuses on Heidi Bergman, played by Julia Roberts. She is a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center, a Geist Group facility helping soldiers transition back to civilian life. Walter Cruz, played by Stephan James. He is one of these soldiers, eager to begin the next phase of his life. Overseeing Heidi and the facility is Colin Belfast, played by Bobby Cannavale. He is an ambitious company man whose manic behavior puts demands on questionable motives.
Four years later, Heidi has started a new life, living with her mother, played by Sissy Spacek. Heidi is working as a small-town waitress, when a Department of Defense auditor, played by Shea Whigham, comes to her with questions about why she left the Homecoming facility. Heidi begins to realize that there’s a whole other story behind the story she’s been telling herself.
The cast also includes Jeremy Allen White, Alex Karpovsky, Dermot Mulroney, among others. Here is a very short teaser trailer.
Directed by Joel Edgerton, Boy Erased is based on a memoir of a teenage boy whose parents encouraged him to attend a gay-deprogramming through a Christian-sponsored program.
The movie stars some hefty actors like Oscar winners Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe and Oscar-nominated Lucas Hedges. Openly gay singer and songwriter Troye Sivan plays one attendee of the church-sponsored program. In the trailer, Sivan appears to keep up with the other talented actors, and I am happy for him.
The movie isn’t about being gay and accepting homosexuality. It’s about accepting your child or people. Parents can mold their children into being what they want to be. I know it is cliche, but parents have to accept who their children are and love them unconditionally.
This isn’t an anti-religion movie because, truly, it is about loving and caring for people and letting people be who they are.
Directed by Harold Cronk, Unbroken: Path to Redemption follows Louis Zamperini, played by Samuel Hunt, as he returns home after undergoing a plane crash, weeks of floating on a makeshift raft in the Pacific, and then years of torture as a prisoner of war.
Angelina Jolie directed Unbroken, a movie about Zamperini’s hardship before returning home. The Coen brothers wrote the script for Unbroken.
They based the movie on Laura Hillenbrand’s bestselling book of the same name. The story begins where the popular movie Unbroken concludes. Still, Zamperini’s story must be told because nightmares of his torment haunted him. Zamperini does not see himself as a hero.
He battles with anger and alcohol abuse. He senses an obligation to go on the Army tour and raise money for War Bonds. Instead, he spends more time in bars than selling War Bonds.
They sent Zamperini to the beaches of Miami for some R&R. He meets Cynthia, played by Merritt Patterson, a young woman who captures his eye—and his heart. They marry and move to Los Angeles.
Nothing goes well with the Zamperini’s marriage and they are heading for a divorce when Cynthia attends Billy Graham’s 1949 Los Angeles Crusade where she finds faith in God and a renewed commitment to her marriage and her husband. Now, her most fervent prayer is for God to help her husband. She prays he finds peace and forgiveness. His grandson, Will Graham, plays Graham.
The screenplay is co-written by Richard Friedenberg and Ken Hixon. Cronk has directed several other faith-based movies. The cast rounds out with David Sakurai and Gary Cole.
The movie clips below are really good. I am impressed.
The movie clip is intense, and it’s like the viewer is right there with him.
The featurette offers details about the making or Switchfoot and the creation of this song “You Found Me” for the movie.
The movie trailer tells the story, and it is easy to guess how it ends if you saw the first movie directed by Jolie.
Directed by Brad Furman, City of Lies, based on an authentic story, stars Johnny Depp as Russell Poole and Forest Whitaker as Jack Jackson. The movie follows Poole and Jackson as they investigate the murders of Tupac Shakur and Notorious BIG spark.
The screenplay is by Christian Contreras, who adapted the story from Randall Sullivan’s non-fiction book. Contreras also wrote the script for Zero Dark Thirty.
Furman is best known for directing The Lincoln Lawyer, and the movie trailer shows a tight and well-crafted movie.
Co-written and directed by Wash Westmoreland, Colette follows Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette, played by Keira Knightley, after marrying a successful Parisian writer Willy, played by Dominic West, is transplanted from her where she grew up in rural France to the scholarly and artistic richness of Paris.
Shorty, Willy persuades Colette to ghostwrite for him. She writes a semi-autobiographical novel about a witty and gutsy country girl named Claudine. The book becomes a trending bestseller and a cultural inspiring story.
After its success, Colette and Willy become the talk of Paris and their adventures inspire additional Claudine novels. Colette’s fight over creative ownership and gender roles drives her to overcome societal constraints, revolutionizing literature, fashion, and sexual expression.
Richard Glatzer and Rebecca Lenkiewicz also contributed to the screenplay. Westmoreland is known for directing Still Alice, which won Julianne Moore several international awards.
The movie is about real people and their relationship with the story. The second trailer shows more of the movie and the sexual innuendoes of one of the most famous books in the world at the time.
Written and directed by Dan Fogelman, Life Itself follows a young New York couple going from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child. The story begins here, and unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes.
The second poster shows the couple expecting their first baby, happy and secure in their relationship. Watch the clip and trailer; something has happened to them so far. All is not heavenly forever.
Life Itself examines the perils and rewards of everyday life in a multigenerational saga featuring a talented ensemble including Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Olivia Cooke, Sergio Peris-Mencheta, Laia Costa, Alex Monner, and Mandy Patinkin.
Fogleman shot the movie in both New York City and Carmona, Spain. Life Itself honors the human condition and its complications with humor, poignancy, and love.
He is multi-talented and wrote the screenplay for Bolt, Cars, and Tangled. His work includes several TV series, from Galavant to This Is Us.
The movie clip shows the main couple we see throughout the trailer. Somehow, they influence the rest of the characters in the story.
Watching the movie trailer, I got the idea of vignettes about life itself based on the birth of the couple’s child.
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos, The Favourite comes from a true story in early 18th century England. A frail Queen Anne, played by Olivia Colman, occupies the throne. Her close friend Lady Sarah, played by Rachel Weisz, governs the country in her stead. A new servant arrives named Abigail, played by Emma Stone. Her charm endears her to Sarah, but it looks like there is more to the story.
I saw the movie and enjoyed it. Coleman is brilliant and outshines all her co-stars. Though, each star in the film is stellar. The comedy is an undercoat of crude vocabulary and bizarre behavior. If you are of faint-heart, then don’t see the movie. My daughter and I went in the late afternoon, and the audience members were over sixty. My daughter and I were the only ones laughing throughout the movie. When the lights came up in the movie house, we saw shocked faces.
Don’t get me wrong; the movie is full of British humor and fantastic pacing. Both of us are glad we went to and saw the movie. The music is a bit odd. I am not quite sure of its purpose in the film.
Lanthimos is from Greece, and he earned award recognition for his movie The Lobster, which Coleman also stars. Coleman stars as Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix’s The Crown. She is replacing Claire Foy, who won a Golden Globe portraying the younger Queen for two seasons.
The featurette focuses on the director and his quirkiness and oddball way of telling a story.
The original screenplay is by Deborah Davis, and it appears this is her first time writing for a movie. Tony McNamara also contributed to the screenplay.
TheThe featurette shows more of how the interplay of the characters works. Though the clip talks about the female leads, we get to see some of the male leads and their odd behavior.
The cleverness of these scenes and the way it shows the characters manipulating each other is brilliant. “Sometimes, a lady likes to have some fun.”
The poster looks similar to the movie poster for the movie Lizzie. I almost thought them one of the same.
The second trailer is so much more fun to watch. It is funny. I hope the story arches and makes sense in the long run.
The movie trailer indicates the movie is a comedy of sorts. I didn’t even recognize Emma Stone.
The next three clips are featurettes concerning the costumes, the cast, and the production design. It is quite interesting to find out where they shot the movie and the color choices for the costumes.
The featurette covers the cinematography, which is fantastic, with wide-angle lenses. Robbie Ryan shares details of how he shot the wide-angle scenes while setting up each shot.
I read the late Stieg Larsson’s books and thought they were fantastic. I remember an abundance of coffee. I even asked a friend from Sweden, “Do people in Sweden drink that much coffee?”
He said they did. I thought Americans and Italians drank a lot of coffee. Larsson’s stories feature lots of coffee served day and night.
Directed by Fede Alvarez, we again follow the dynamic figure and title character of the celebrated book series created by Larsson. Claire Foy plays the vigilante Lisbeth Salander this time. Salander returns to the movie screen in The Girl in the Spider’s Web, a first-time adaptation of the recent global bestseller.
Looking at the photos and footage of Foy as Salander, it is refreshing to see the Golden Globe winner play the outcast vigilante defender. Steven Knight, Fede Alvarez, and Jay Basu adapted the screenplay.
Alvarez is from Uruguay and is best known for his movie Don’t Breathe, a horror movie
The cast includes Sverrir Gudnason, Lakeith Stanfield, Sylvia Hoeks, Stephen Merchant, Claes Bang, Christopher Convery, Synnøve Macody Lund, and Vicky Krieps.
The red poster is fantastic because it shows the pensive character and her intent to pull off this unbelievable twist in the circumstances.
The Vignette shows us Lisbeth Salander as Foy describes her character.
The three movie clips are intense and offer a moment of entertainment. Claire Foy’s accent in the “Sisters” clip is unbelievable. She nails it.
The trailer below is called the third trailer, but I don’t know where the second trailer is. Anyway, the movie is looking good. I just saw Claire Foy win an Emmy for The Crown. This girl can act. Is that her sister?
Co-written and directed by Felix Van Groeningen, Beautiful Boy follows the real story from the memoirs of father and son David and Nic Sheff. The movie stars Steve Carell, Timothée Chalamet, and Maura Tierney.
Groeningen is a Belgium writer and director. One movie he directed is The Broken Circle Breakdown, which earned an Oscar nomination for the Best Foreign Film. The movie won several awards, including Label Europa Cinemas at the Berlin International Film Festival.
Based on the best-selling pair of memoirs from father and son David and Nic Sheff, the movie chronicles the heart wrenching and inspiring experience of survival, relapse, and recovery in a family coping with addiction over many years.
The two movie clips show the discomfort of trying to reach your child when personal contact is lost.
David Sheff’s memoir is called “Beautiful Boy: A Father’s Journey Through His Son’s Addiction,” and Nic Sheff’s memoir is called “Tweak: Growing Up on Methamphetamines.”
Interestingly, kids get diagnosed with learning disabilities and given methamphetamines. They become addicted to them.
Watch the movie trailer and see some fine, fine acting by both Carell and Chalamet. Chalamet as Nic literal morphs in the restaurant scene. I didn’t even recognize him at first.
Directed by George Tillman, Jr. from the New York Times bestseller by Angie Thomas comes a poignant and contemporary story about the social scales tipping over as police officers unjustly kill a childhood friend.
The poster is so much better than the first. The star on the poster tells us it is a young girl’s story.
The Hate U Give follows Starr Carter, played by Amandla Stenberg, who constantly switches between two cultures. Two very diverse cultures from the poor, mostly black, neighborhood where she lives and the rich, mostly white, prep school she attends.
The strained balance between these cultures is toppled over when Starr witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend Khalil, played by Algee Smith, at the hands of a police officer.
Now, facing the community’s social pressures, Starr learns she must find her voice and stand up for what’s right.
Tillman helmed several movies and produced quite a few TV series and films. He is best known for Soul Food, his first movie as a director, which he made for $7 million. The movie grossed $43 million.
Audrey Wells adapted the screenplay. She has scripted and directed Under the Tuscan Sun and Guinevere while writing screenplays for diverse films such as George of the Jungle and Shall We Dance.
The Hate U Give also stars Regina Hall, Russell Hornsby, Issa Rae, KJ Apa, Sabrina Carpenter, Common and Anthony Mackie.
Directed by Sam Esmail, I am excited about this Prime Video Series. Homecoming is a mind-bending psychological thriller. The story focuses on Heidi Bergman, played by Julia Roberts. She is a caseworker at the Homecoming Transitional Support Center, a Geist Group facility helping soldiers transition back to civilian life. Walter Cruz, played by Stephan James. He is one of these soldiers, eager to begin the next phase of his life. Overseeing Heidi and the facility is Colin Belfast, played by Bobby Cannavale. He is an ambitious company man whose manic behavior puts demands on questionable motives.
