Full of witches, madness, and courtly power-grabbing machinations, not to mention it’s Shakespeare’s shortest play, Macbeth makes for good movie fodder. And now, with The Tragedy of Macbeth, we get Joel Coen’s take on The Scottish Play. Added bonus, this also marks the Coen Brother’s first solo joint, sans sibling, filmmaking partner, and career co-conspirator Ethan.
In 1999, the Wachowski’s rewrote the cinematic game plan with The Matrix. Big and brash, the influence on movies remains palpable and omnipresent today. The subsequent sequels, Reloaded and Revolutions, are overstuffed, messy, and divisive—and still awesome despite being way up their own asses. Now, almost 20 years after the fact, Lana Wachowski, operating solo at the helm for the first time, is back with the long-awaited The Matrix Resurrections. And the results are mixed. At times this is exciting and fresh; at others, it’s a painfully dreary rehash.
As a whole, I’m not entirely certain what Licorice Pizza, the new 70s-set coming-of-age film from Paul Thomas Anderson (Phantom Thread), amounts to. Pieces are absolutely magical, full of joy and whimsy. Others…are a bit more problematic, at best; downright cringe-inducing at worst. It watches like a movie where the filmmaker has zero checks and balances, able to indulge any and every flight of fancy with no oversight. Which is both a good and bad thing by turns. This freedom allows PTA to indulge himself; the flipside of that is, of course, overindulgence.
Around these parts, we’re big fans of Robert Eggers. When you go back to back with The Witch and The Lighthouse right out of the gate, we’re going to pay attention. And damn, the first trailer for his upcoming Viking vengeance tale, The Northman, does not disappoint. Check it out below.
Let’s be honest, no one gives a damn what I think about Spider-Man: No Way Home, the latest in the complicated Marvel/Sony/etc. wall-crawler relationship. So, here’s the short version: it’s fine, 100% fine. It will honestly probably sound like I hated it, but I didn’t, it’s enjoyable enough, though entirely toothless, even by Marvel standards.
Are you ready for the most Nicolas Cage movie that Nicolas Cage ever Nicolas Cage-d? If that sentence seems awesome instead of like gibberish, you may be ready for the first trailer for The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.
A low-budget, Dolph Lundgren-directed, Scott Adkins-starring DTV action film. If those words mean anything to you, and if they do and they pique your interest in a positive way, Castle Falls has something for you.
