First Trailer for SHAFT Starring Samuel L. Jackson

In the summer of 2000 I was thirteen and too young to see Samuel L. Jackson kick ass in Shaft or to know what Shaft was, for that matter. And so, never did I catch up with this billed-as-a-remake, but really more of a generequel (maybe the first of its kind?) as Jackson's John Shaft character was the nephew of the earlier film's Shaft. In never going back to catch-up with that film I also never caught with any of the three previous Shaft titles starring Richard Roundtree that were released in 1971, 1972, and 1973 with a television series picking up that same year and producing seven 90-minute movies through 1974 with Roundtree reprising his role in each. In 2000, Jackson was as hot as ever though. Leading up to Shaft Jackson was double-billed with Tommy Lee Jones in William Friedkin's Rules of Engagement and followed it up with (somewhat ironically) M. Night Shyamalan's Unbreakable; because I'm sure the guy thought nineteen years ago that two of his films that year would produce sequels, but that both would take nearly two decades to come to fruition. Speaking of Jackson, as Glass presently sits atop the box office for its third consecutive weekend the man will also appear in next month's Captain Marvel as a younger version of Nick Fury, there's no telling how much Fury might show up in Avengers: Endgame, and if the first trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home is any indication it looks as if Jackson's Fury will be playing a fairly pivotal role in that MCU film as well. So, three Marvel movies, two sequels including Shaft to nineteen-year-old properties, and potentially two other major releases this year (The Last Full Measure and The Banker) put Jackson as not only the busiest actors in Hollywood, but considering the likely box office for each of his franchise films here, also one of the most profitable. As for the trailer itself, it looks like a mixed bag of fine enough action and some solid comedy bits-most of which will come from Jesse T. Usher's not-as-inherently-badass long lost son of Jackson’s character. Tim Story (Think Like A Man, Barbershop) directs from a script by Kenya Baris (Black-ish) and Alex Barnow (The Goldbergs). Shaft also stars Regina Hall, Alexandra Shipp, Matt Lauria, Titus Welliver, Cliff “Method Man” Smith, and opens on June 14th, 2019.

First Trailer for Ben Affleck's LIVE BY NIGHT

In the wake of the fall movie season kicking off this week with the release of the Warner Bros. Sully it seems the production company has gone into full media blitz mode with the remainder of their fall slate that contains many of their likely awards contenders. We already caught a glimpse of the WB's Christmas week release on Wednesday with Collateral Beauty and now we have our first look at Ben Affleck's directorial follow-up to his Best Picture-winning Argo. It's been four years since Affleck directed a film and in the interim has worked with Terrence Malick, David Fincher, and Zack Snyder who likely have contributed to what growth we might see in Affleck's fourth feature. Given the actor, writer, director, and producer has been enamored with the DC extended cinematic universe as of late with more being made about the pre-production of his solo Batman film (which will be his fifth directorial venture) than that of his upcoming turn in Gavin O'Connor's The Accountant which drops in theaters in just over a month it's nice to finally see a glimpse of what Affleck has been up to behind the camera as I'm in the middle of reading the Dennis Lehane novel on which Live By Night is based. Set in the prohibition era Affleck plays Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain who has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing for a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters. Honestly, I love the look and the tone this trailer conveys and even the soundtrack featuring Hozier's "Arsonist's Lullabye," works. Affleck enlisted legendary director of photography Robert Richardson (The Aviator, The Hateful Eight) and the particular aesthetic shines through here as visually the film looks as thrilling as the story should be. While I was worried that the film would for some reason end up getting dumped amidst the early spring crowd WB seems to have confidence in the film as they've scheduled it in the same slot as The Revenant last year with a limited qualifying run in December. Here's hoping they're right. Live By Night also stars Zoe Saldana, Elle Fanning, Sienna Miller, Brendan Gleeson, Scott Eastwood, Chris Cooper, Titus Welliver, Anthony Michael Hall, Chris Messina, and opens on January 13, 2017.

TRANSFOMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION Review

Is escapism really that if the relief we seek turns out to be just as unpleasant as the reality? It is questions such as this that begin to seep into your mind during the exhausting, nearly three-hour experience that is Transformers: Age of Extinction. Director Michael Bay has no intentions of creating anything other than grand escapism here in that this is not a film intended for a specific audience or niche, but is mass appeal in the largest sense possible. The thing about Bay that most people hate is that he has the mentality of a 12 year-old boy and composes his films from that perspective while being technically proficient. While there will be those who ask what might be wrong with the imagination of a pre-teen boy splattered across an IMAX screen the answer is technically, nothing, but might result in some incohesive story elements and slight exploitation of the young female body. There are stereotypes thrown around here from time to time, but the racism has been dialed back considerably from the truly messy second installment, Revenge of the Fallen. There is no mention of Sam Witwicky anywhere and thus there is no forced feeling of having to evolve that character from where we saw him last allowing for the new humans to simply exist in order to aid the giant robots in whatever quest they are out to achieve this time. The film is unnecessarily, even punishingly long in that you'll be sitting in the theater for over three hours if you arrive early and catch the previews. Bay could have easily kept this at a strict two hours while providing some solid entertainment, some stunning visuals and a story the majority of us could follow with ease, but he doesn't. Bay is not one to avoid indulgence and so what we have actually been given is an over-complicated version of a rather simple story that in being so big forgets the little things such as a reason for shoe-horning in robot dinosaurs. To be fair, Age of Extinction is in some ways an improvement over the last two films in that Bay seems to try and take the criticisms he's given and apply them to improving his work (the streamlined story, the less distracting human characters) yet in the end it more or less feels like we're watching the same things we've already seen before.

Full Trailer for TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

It has been three years since we've seen Optimus Prime and his fellow Autobots on the big screen and that last impression left by Dark of the Moon was at least better than Revenge of the Fallen though it came with -an air of conclusion, that this was the end of a good run and one that would be re-visited by youngsters again and again as time went by and the films became more regarded for what they were rather than what grown-up fanboys wanted them to be upon initial arrival. They are beautifully rendered images of giant robots fighting one another that provide guilty pleasure entertainment for the more sophisticated mind and awe-inspiring wonder for those who are just discovering what movies can really do when the cinema screen is taken advantage of. Unfortunately, most of Michael Bay's films get a bad wrap on the fact he takes pleasure in consistently directing as if he were a 13 year-old boy. Still, when this mentality is applied to the premise of, again, giant robots fighting one another I don't necessarily understand why it is a bad thing and have to wonder how it could be done better? Today we get our first look at the fourth installment in the series (the one Bay said he wouldn't be back for, but is) and how the franchise will live on with Shia LaBeouf (I think it will be fine, they got Mark Wahlberg). I was skeptical of where Bay would take his robots this time around, but getting a certified movie star like Wahlberg to take the leading role does nothing but lend this installment a renewed sense of credibility. Though it is hard to take a robot riding a dinosaur robot while holding a sword seriously, the first trailer for Age of Extinction does its best to make us believe this will be a nice departure from the previous trilogy and that there is renewed reason for us to be investing in these robots again. Transformers: Age of Extinction stars Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor, Kelsey Grammer, Stanley Tucci, T.J. Miller, Titus Welliver, Han Geng, Sophia Myles, Li Bingbing and opens June 27th.

PROMISED LAND Review

Gus Van Sant is a director whose work I have unfortunately never been highly exposed to. I hear the guy is rather good, but besides his 2008 Oscar contender Milk and his rather underrated 2000 film Finding Forrester I haven't seen any of his films. Yes, this does mean I've never sat down and watched the film written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck that made them stars and won them Oscars. I've heard mixed things about it and seeing as it came out when I was only ten years old I have a valid excuse I think for never getting around to it. Still, this matters little as Mr. Van Sant's latest film which again stars Matt Damon is a beautifully looking tale of moral conflict that deals with an issue known as fracking. We'll get more into that interesting term later, but to draw you into why you should be interested in this film would be to say that it not only stars good, credible actors such as Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski, Hal Holbrook, Rosemarie DeWitt and several other, lesser known character actors who have small parts as the towns folk opposed to the big bad corporate company coming into town and taking away their pride. Besides that, this was also written and produced by both Damon and Krasinski and was originally intended as Damon's directorial debut. Who knows what or how different this film might have been had it been made under Damon's directorial eye, we won't know until we get a chance to see that, but with what has been delivered here I can feel nothing if not appeased by the effort. There is a straightforward, matter of fact feel to the film that paints a black and white picture but doesn't stop there. It takes things a step further and adds a more complex layer of conflict we as an audience naturally place ourselves in the middle of.