'Emperor' Trailer: Civil War Drama Stars Dayo Okeniyi As Legendary Outlaw Slave Shields Green

The acclaimed drama Harriet finally gave Harriet Tubman's story the big screen treatment it long deserved, and now another powerful figure in the anti-slavery movement will get his due. Emperor is the new film from Oscar-nominated producer Reginald Hudlin (Django Unchained, The Great White Hype), and centers on the story of Shields Green, an outlaw slave and leader in John Brown's infamous raid on Harper's Ferry.

The film stars Dayo Okeniyi (The Hunger Games) as Shields "Emperor" Green, joined by Naturi Naughton (Power), Kat Graham (All Eyez on Me), Mykelti Williamson (Fences), James Cromwell (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), and Bruce Dern (Nebraska). Longtime producer Mark Amin (Good Kill) directs from a script he co-wrote with Pat Charles (Black Lightning).

Okeniyi looks impressive and forceful in the role of Green, a figure that has largely been overlooked in the accounts of Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry. It does seem to be reading from the same Harriet playbook, emphasizing action to give this piece of history a more contemporary feel. Green comes across like a historical superhero, which I guess is fitting given some of his exploits.

SYNOPSIS: Emperor is inspired by the legend of Shields “Emperor” Green, a descendant of African kings turned outlaw slave in the pre-Civil War South.  Seeking freedom for his family, Emperor fights his way north, joining the daring raid on Harper’s Ferry and helping alter the course of American history.

Emperor hits theaters on March 27th.

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Review: 'The Peanut Butter Falcon', A Feel-Good Comedy That Outwrestles Disability Stereotypes

As a wrestling fan it's been a treat seeing it grow beyond limited cinematic confines set by films such as No Holds Barred and *shudder* Ready to Rumble. Following on the heels of the excellent family drama Fighting With My Family, the sport of pro wrestling now is key to the charming Tom Sawyer-esque adventure, The Peanut Butter Falcon. A low-key human drama with big names including Shia LaBeouf, Dakota Johnson, and Bruce Dern, along with wrestling superstars Jake "The Snake" Roberts and Mick Foley, it's the film's charismatic newcomer Zack Gottsagen who emerges as a champion.

Gottsagen is an actor with Down Syndrome who befriended the writer/director duo of Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz. Together they came up with a starring vehicle for him that would make the best use of his over-sized charisma. That role is Zak, a young man with Down Syndrome lives in a North Carolina nursing home because there aren't other facilities designed for people with his specific needs. There, he's aided by the feisty senior citizens, notably Carl (Dern), in repeatedly escaping the home, much to the chagrin of caretaker Eleanor (Johnson). On this latest occasion, Zak gets away wearing nothing but his underwear, in hopes of finding a wrestling school run by his idol, professional wrestling superstar the Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church).

Zak is a big enough personality to carry this picturesque cross-bayou journey on his own, but he's eventually joined by hard-luck fisherman Tyler (LaBeouf), whose guilt over a troubled past has only earned him a lot of enemies. He doesn't take too kindly to Zak hanging around him, but agrees to help the likable kid out. Meanwhile, violent retribution for Tyler's past actions follows close behind. As does Eleanor, who will lose her job if she doesn't get Zak back to the home.

The turns this movie takes are obvious, but I think you come to this kind of film expecting a certain amount of cliché. They exist to be embraced by an audience eager for a wholesome, heart-warming movie with multiple characters we can feel good about rooting on. Those movies are far rarer than they have any business being. So we aren't at all surprised that Zak and Tyler grow closer during their journey, something akin to brothers. Throughout it all, Zak is treated with equal footing to the other characters. Nilson and Schwartz don't try to turn him into a joke, nor do they beg for our sympathy. Zak is his own man with a dream that he will not be denied from.

All around the performances are excellent, with Gottsagen truly performing up to the level of his more-experienced co-stars. It's another strong, unglamorous role for LaBeouf, following a similarly dramatic turn in this year's Honey Boy, and Johnson makes the most out of her limited time. She and LaBeouf have greater chemistry than I would've thought. I also like Thomas Haden Church as Chris aka the Salt Water Redneck, who turns out to be not at all like his wrestling persona. Having met my share of wrestlers, both active and retired, the desire to be in the ring never dies and that's something Church brings that's hard for non-wrestlers to capture.

The Peanut Butter Falcon may have a weird title, but what it says about achieving one's goals is understandable by all. For Zak, it's to meet his favorite professional wrestler, but the dream could be just about anything else and he's so unique, bold, and funny that we'd be invested in seeing it come true.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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Review: Quentin Tarantino's 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood', A Breezy And Violent Tinseltown Fairy Tale

I want to live in the idyllic 1969 that Quentin Tarantino glorifies in his stylish and surprisingly personal Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. It's a time of great upheaval in the country, but here, in this place of cinematic gods and goddesses, the glamour, the magic, it's as captivating as ever. Being there, and charmed by Hollywood's spell, is something Tarantino captures with the giddy enthusiasm we've come to expect from him, and if he's truly wrapping up his career with one more movie, then this is going to rank right up there among his finest.

In a way, I would've thought Once Upon a Time in Hollywood would be his finale, because it's just such a Tarantino movie. A callback to an era he clearly loves, it's also a walkthrough of the many genres he's tackled throughout his career. Western, war, crime, even kung-fu all get their due, while Tarantino dabbles in something resembling horror during the final act. But at its heart, this is a movie about the end of the golden era of Hollywood, reflected in washed-up TV cowboy Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), his best friend and stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), and real-life actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).

Together, Dalton, Booth, and Tate represent three facets of the Hollywood mystique: the former star on the downturn of his career; the guy just happy to make others famous; and the wide-eyed innocent in the bloom of her stardom. Tarantino views this era, and these three people in particular, with rose-colored glasses. His Hollywood is a place where there's never a cloud in the sky, the cars are loud and fast, the night sky radiates with the glow from movie theaters far and wide, and the music is constant. Rarely a moment goes by that music isn't playing somewhere; and when it stops...well, that's when something bad is about to happen. This era is about to get a ferocious, bloody wake up call by the Manson Family (Manson is played by Matt Smith, with Margaret Qualley and Dakota Fanning among his followers), who usher in a darker period.

First, however, we have Dalton, with Tarantino taking long stretches to explore his time as star of the hit TV western, Bounty Law. It made him a star and a household name, but that's over and now he's reduced to bit parts playing the "heavy" in TV shows led by other, younger actors. There's a brilliant summation of Dalton's career by a producer played by Al Pacino, in which he explains how the studios are burying Dalton in favor of others. Later, we get extensive walkthroughs of Dalton's appearances on the TV shows Lancer (with Timothy Olyphant as James Stacy) and FBI. The first chapter is also a little bit like Tarantino's version of a buddy film, with Booth is the cool, unflappable wingman to Dalton's insecure celeb. There's a great sequence on the set of The Green Hornet where Booth challenges Bruce Lee (played expertly by Mike Moh) to a fight, giving Tarantino a chance to indulge his kung-fu cravings for the first time since Kill Bill.

While the Manson stuff is lurking in the background, this movie isn't really about them. They do play a major role in the second act as Booth investigates the ranch owned by half-blind George Spahn (played by Bruce Dern, previously meant for Burt Reynolds), but if you're expecting a deep dive into their Helter Skelter world this is the wrong place. The same goes for Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate. She may be all over the billboards but Robbie is very much a supporting player in this. Those expecting a Tate biopic are going to be disappointed. She's meant to represent something pure and innocent about Hollywood, when being famous wasn't something anybody with a YouTube account could. It took talent, looks, and a lot of luck. Tate was one of the fortunate few, and in the scenes we get with her we glimpse her appreciation of that fact.

This is, unquestionably, a movie for DiCaprio and Pitt. As Hollywood royalty it's funny to watch them play actors barely keeping it together in an ever-shifting show business landscape.  Tarantino creates such vividly detailed, specific characters and he's got two actors who can deliver on all of their quirks. DiCaprio gets to show his humor and heart in the uncertain and stuttering Dalton, who needs help from a child actress (Julia Butters, fantastic) to learn how to act method. Meanwhile, Booth is always cool under pressure, with Pitt's devil-may-care performance a nice tease of the stuntman's dark side.

The language isn't as salty, but the Tarantino violence is still at a peak. Sure, it really only comes in a few scenes, one of which in a terrific Inglourious Basterds-esque moment involving a flamethrower and a bunch of Nazis, but it's bound to rub a few the wrong way. The flippant way Tarantino approaches violence towards women is a little uncomfortable because it's excessive for no apparent reason other than shock value.

As if perfectly attuned to the era it depicts, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is a gloriously breezy ride that's even better if you're as hip to this stuff as Tarantino is. Of course, few people have Tarantino's depth of knowledge and appreciation, which is why he clearly had so much fun making this movie. It's hard to imagine him ever wanting to retire, because I feel like once he's done nobody else will be making movies like this anymore and that is just too sad a thought to consider.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

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'Freaks' Trailer: Emile Hirsch Leads The Dark Sci-Fi Thriller Headed To Comic-Con

Comic-Con is the place to be for Marvel and DC fans to indulge in their favorite comic book characters, but one of the cool things about it is that there's also plenty of stuff that's off the beaten path. For fans of superhero movies that means an opportunity to check out a film such as Freaks, the dark sci-fi thriller that arrives later this summer.

I must confess, when the teaser dropped a few weeks ago I didn't really make the superhero connection, but with the film making a stop at Comic-Con preceded by this newly-cut trailer, it's clear the audience they are targeting. Emile Hirsch stars as a concerned father who locks his daughter (Lexy Kolker) away with a warning of dangers in the outside world. He's speaking of the Abnormals, superpowered beings the government is attempting to control. His plan to keep safe are thrown into chaos when the young girl is tempted to leave home, and discovers what the true danger is.

The film is directed by Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein (Kim Possible), having made a splash at TIFF last year. Hirsch and Kolker are joined in the cast by Bruce Dern, Grace Park, and Amanda Crew.

Freaks hits theaters on August 23rd. If you're attending San Diego Comic-Con and want to check out a special screening, it takes place on July 18h and you can RSVP here.

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'Freaks' Trailer: Emile Hirsch Is An Overprotective Father Hiding A World-Changing Secret

In the new trailer for the psychological thriller Freaks, Emile Hirsch plays a father who keeps his young daughter locked away in their home, claiming to be protecting her from something that's part of the outside world. But is he really telling the truth? That's the big question in this film that had quite a few critics buzzing after its debut at last year's TIFF, and this trailer is a good indication why.

Directed by Kim Possible's  Adam Stein and Zach Lipovsky, Freaks may sound a little bit like 10 Cloverfield Lane and maybe a little like A Quiet Place, but there's something more going on here than just the story of an overprotective, possibly paranoid, father. Hirsch's character keeps his young daughter Chloe (Lexy Kolker) under strict orders not to interact with the outside world in any way, and when she nearly gets outside he claims that she nearly got them killed. He then boards up the windows and locks her away in a darkened room. Is he protecting her from the world or protecting the world from her? When Chloe finally does get outside, the reality throws everything she was told out the window.

Here's the synopsis: Kept locked inside the house by her father, 7-year-old Chloe lives in fear and fascination of the outside world, where Abnormals create a constant threat – or so she believes. When a mysterious stranger offers her a glimpse of what’s really happening outside, Chloe soon finds that while the truth isn’t so simple, the danger is very real.

Something tells me this footage gives away just a tad too much, but maybe I'm wrong. Is it supposed to look like it's set in the same universe as Fox's superhero series The Gifted? I could've done without this trailer ever leaving the home's doorstep.

Also starring a very creepy Bruce Dern, plus Grace Park and Amanda Crew, Freaks opens August 23rd.

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Review: 'The Mustang', Powerful Performances Can't Tame This Disappointing Prison Drama

That two movies within a calendar year would focus on wild horse training as an exploration of masculinity, redemption, and rehabilitation is somewhat incredible. Following Chloe Zhao's tremendous and award-winning The Rider, we now have Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre‘s feature debut The Mustang, which features another smoldering performance by Matthias Schoenaerts. But the enigmatic actor can't fully move the film out of Zhao's shadow, and its story of a convict's new lease on life is too sparse to set itself apart.

Schoenaerts stars as Roman Coleman, an inmate at a Nevada Correctional Facility, and he's not very good with people. Actually, that's exactly what he tells the prison therapist (Connie Britton, woefully misused) as she tries to guide him back into general population after a stint in isolation. Clearly, he's a guy with some issues which is why he's in prison in the first place. Assigned to an outdoor cleanup detail, he's taken by the ferocity of a stallion raging inside of an isolated enclosure, part of the prison's Wild Horse Inmate Program. We're told the real-life program was a means of helping to curb the overpopulation of wild horses, providing some so that inmates could train/break the horses and thus, in a sense, break themselves. Sensing a connection between these two feral creatures, the program's curmudgeonly overseer (Bruce Dern, terrific) assigns Roman to care for the horse, and have him trained in time for an auction a few weeks away.

The rage that boils inside Roman won't be extinguished so easily. He's got long-simmering problems with his daughter (Blockers star Gideon Adlon), a bullying cellmate, and now a horse to care for who is jus as obstinate as he is. Their first session goes about as badly as possible. It's bad when the trainer ends up punching the horse, right? Not like a gentle smack on the rear while on the saddle, but delivering blows like Mike Tyson in his prime. Seems Roman can't really get along with animals, either. Until he can, of course, and slowly over the course a few weeks he makes friends (one played by Jason Mitchell, great in a limited role) and begins to bond with the equine, although deep challenges remain that question whether wild horses can truly be tamed.

There's power simmering just underneath the surface that The Mustang never fully taps into. In a way it mirrors the barely-contained energy of its star, who has played similarly-charged figures in Bullhead, Rust & Bone, and more.  Filmed at an abandoned Nevada correctional facility, the rugged terrain captured by Clermont-Tonnerre evokes a frontier spirit denied by the men trapped behind prison walls. But the beautiful cinematography and Shoenaert's performance are let down by a script from Mona Fastvold and Brock Norman Brock that leaves too much about Roman up in the air. We know little about the man he used to be which clouds some of the irrational choices he makes later, especially towards his daughter. Even his connection to the horse feels forced. Breaking a wild animal isn't an easy task, but for someone unskilled to do it while showing no real talent for it is downright laughable. Schoenaerts and the cast throw themselves into making these characters as authentic as possible, providing detail that was likely missing from the screenplay.

As the credits roll and we see images of real-life inmates who had their lives changed by this program, which still exists today, it makes you realize how much potential The Mustang let gallop away.

Rating: 2.5 out of 5

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'The Mustang' Trailer: Sundance Drama Stars Matthias Schoenaerts As A Trainer Of Wild Horses

A month from now chilly moviegoers, critics, and filmmakers will be cramming into tents at Park City for the Sundance Film Festival. The year's first major festival has an intriguing lineup, as always, and we're already starting to see trailers for some of those films emerge. The Mustang is one that appears to be galloping in the hoofprints of last year's Sundance favorite, The Rider, and stars my favorite actor working today: Matthias Schoenaerts.

Expect this one to get a lot of attention at the festival, especially with Robert Redford on board as an exec-producer. The Mustang stars an almost unrecognizable Schoenaerts as a Nevada convict participating in a rehabilitation program where he helps train wild horses. As a man struggling to connect with both humans and horses, he begins to turn the corner while training an especially feisty mustang.  The film co-stars Bruce Dern, Jason Mitchell, and Connie Britton.

Making her directorial debut is French actress Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre, who co-wrote the script with Mona Fastvold (The Childhood of a Leader) and Brock Norman Brock (Bronson). Lots of talent there.

The Mustang will be part of the Sundance Film Festival which begins on January 24th.

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Bruce Dern Joins 'Once Upon A Time In Hollywood' In Burt Reynolds' Old Role

The sudden death of Burt Reynolds just weeks ago was a big loss, and his fans expressed that through their grief, and also through celebrations of his career. And that career was actually at one of its busiest moments in a long time. The actor was set for a high-profile role in Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, and sadly, his death left that film with a vacancy that would be tough to fill. While nobody can truly replace Reynolds or what he would have brought to the role, we now know who will do his best by stepping in, and it's one of his very dear friends.

Deadline reports  Bruce Dern will step in for his friend Burt Reynolds. He'll take on the part of George Spahn, the elderly man who rented out his mansion to be used in Westerns, but also allowed the Manson Family to set up shop on his ranch. Dern had been shooting another film in Spain, Remember Me, but the director put the shoot on pause so he could come and work with Tarantino. Pretty cool.

Dern recently earned an Oscar nomination for his performance in Nebraska, and is obviously a tremendous actor in his own right. He'll be a strong addition to a cast that already boasts Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, and more. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opens July 26th 2019.

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Review: 'American Dresser', An Unfulfilling Trip Across The States With Tom Berenger

American Dresser tells the story of John Moore (Tom Berenger), a recent widower with two grown daughters. John has turned to the bottle ever since his wife, Sandra (Gina Gershon) died of cancer. His family is falling apart, and his drinking is putting a strain on his relationship with his two daughters. One day John finds a letter in his wife’s belongings that leads him to impulsively embark on a cross country road trip to the pacific northwest on his motorcycle, a trip that him and his wife had planned before she became ill. John’s longtime friend Charlie (Keith David) is very sick and may have to have his leg amputated. Charlie convinces John to let him tag along for the journey – as it may be the last chance he has for the ride of a lifetime - and the two set off. Before long, Jon and Charlie find themselves in a precarious situation when John’s bike breaks down. A young hotshot biker named Willie (writer/director Carmine Cangialosi), who seems to be running from something, comes to their aid and saves the day. John allows Willie to join the trip, much to Charlie’s dismay. The three of them continue along the path to the pacific northwest and all the adventures that lay in their way.

American Dresser never establishes any significant character development. There are some brief moments towards the beginning of the film where you can see the anguish John is experiencing and how his wife’s death is fracturing his relationship with his daughters. At his wife’s funeral he can’t even bring himself to comfort his daughter who is falling apart – not being able to find the words to say to help ease her pain. He wants to be there for her, but just doesn’t know how anymore. One helpless gaze tells a thousand words about the chasm that exists between the two of them.

Outside of some scattered brief moments where Charlie discusses his injury and John relives their moments in the war, American Dresser lacks at providing any true depth to the characters. John, Charlie, and Willie just go from stop to stop on their road trip, meeting different people, many absurd, along the way. There are some dramatic moments and issues the three characters find themselves in during their trip, but without really connecting with the characters, it is hard to truly care about the problems that plague them. The acting leaves a lot to be desired as well. A shaky plot, lack of true care for any of the characters, and subpar acting is not a recipe for success – you’d be better off avoiding this trip.

Rating: 1.5 out of 5

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Disturbing Teaser For TIFF Sci-Fi/Thriller 'Freaks' With Emile Hirsch And Bruce Dern

One of the buzziest titles to debut at TIFF is Freaks, a sci-fi/thriller that looks like a combination of Signs and The Cabin in the Woods. But what is it really? Well, that's hard to say, and the new teaser, while heavy on disturbing imagery, doesn't reveal very much...



The cast is pretty great for this one, led by Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, Grace Park, Amanda Crew, and newcomger Lexy Kolker. Behind the camera are Adam B. Stein and Zach Lipovsky, the latter having previously worked on the awful Leprechaun: Origins. Together they're currently co-directing the upcoming live-action Kim Possible movie, so it's tough to tell what to expect from these two.

The story centers on a 7-year-old girl locked away in the house by her disturbed father who warns of grave dangers outside their door. When a mysterious man awesomely-named Mr. Snowcone arrives he convinces the girl to run away, which is when she discovers “bizarre, threatening, and mysterious new world beyond her front door after she escapes her father’s protective and paranoid control.”  

In only a few seconds we see things being set on fire, claws outside a window, terrified cops ready to shoot something, bleeding eyes, a mysterious vapor-like substance, and more. There's a lot going on here, and hopefully we learn more when a longer trailer is released.

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Review: 'Class Rank' Starring Skyler Gisondo, Olivia Holt, And Bruce Dern

Class Rank is quirky. Quirky is its defining characteristic. The protagonists, the plot, the visual style, everything about it is whimsical and strange. And that’s not a bad thing. I actually really enjoyed its odd sensibilities, the only problem is that at times it felt like I had seen them before.

The film follows ridiculously eccentric and formal high school student Bernard (Skyler Gisondo), and his campaign to run for a seat with the school board of directors. Fueled by his preppy classmate Veronica (Olivia Holt) and her drive to look exceptional on her college transcripts, the pair form an unlikely alliance and shake up the world of local government.

Circling back to the quirkiness of the film, Class Rank is very clearly inspired by the early films of Wes Anderson, particularly Rushmore, with its borderline inhumanly quirky central characters making mountains out of molehills in terms of the small town’s school board election. It’s a very Anderson quirk, which is again, not to say there’s anything wrong with that, I love Wes Anderson’s films, but they’re very unique to his voice, whereas Class Rank felt somewhat familiar. There are ways to be reminiscent while of another artist’s work while still being your own thing. Wrinkle in Time for example, felt very similar to the early fantasy films of Steven Spielberg, and yet was still able to have its own identity unique to itself. During Class Rank, I couldn’t get the comparison out of my head.

I did appreciate this movie’s strangeness however. I found the characters both incredibly weird and endearing at the same time, and fully enjoyed spending 90’s minutes in their unusual world. This is a very charming film. I loved the dynamics between the various characters, none of whom would naturally be friends. I particularly liked the subplot concerning Bernard’s grandfather (Bruce Dern) and his attempts to get back out into the world. It’s a movie about finding your voice while also adapting it to suit the widest possible audience. A coming of age movie about politics. If you like your movies cute and offbeat, you’d really like Class Rank.

The only thing that didn’t land for me with the film was the beginning of its third act. It played into a trope that a lot of comedies do, where the third act gets tense and heavy, with characters revealing secrets and getting angry at each other. While I understand the necessity of these types of plot beats, to me it always seems like the film would have been better suited to stay with its initial tone and keep the laughs coming, and I felt that here too. I wish there was a way to hit the necessary plot beats covered in the section of the film without bringing the pacing down.

Past that I fully enjoyed this weird little movie. Much like its main characters, it lives in its own strange little world, which is ridiculously fun to go visit. Class Rank is proudly the quirkiest thing I’ve seen all year.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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Review: 'Chappaquiddick', Ted Kennedy's Legacy Gets Battered And Bruised

"I'm not going to be President", a somber Ted Kennedy (Jason Clarke) tells his overlooked friend/cousin Joe Gargan (Ed Helms) minutes after he escaped drowning in a car that had tumbled off of a bridge in the New England island of Chappaquiddick. Little did he know how accurate he would be. If his escape had been a harrowing tale of survival then maybe that could be spun into political gold, but instead the incident, which saw Kennedy's loyal aide Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara) die in those frigid waters, would become a scandal that dogged his career to the end.

John Curran's film Chappaquiddick isn't so much about the crash, those details are common knowledge and have been for decades. It's a gripping and timely tale about the concoction of the story around the scandal, and the efforts by Kennedy, using the currency of his family legacy and a distracted public, to keep his reputation intact. This is a film about power, and how being born with the right name can be enough to reshape reality.

In the summer of '69 Ted Kennedy is still in the earliest stages of his political career, but he's already feeling the weight of his fallen brothers, Joe, President John F. Kennedy, and Bobby who would die just a year earlier. Ted's the public face of the family now and is expected make a move for the White House , but at this point he's undecided on a future path, despite the pressure put on him by his father (Bruce Dern). That weekend he's hosting a "reunion" of loyal Kennedy staffers known as the "Boiler Room Girls", all lovely single women of 28-years-old or younger, at an event in which the only other attendees are grabby married men, most of them Kennedys or Kennedy acolytes. Mary Jo is one of those campaign staffers and she was very close to Ted, some say too close, which only complicated matters when their late night drive ended up in tragedy. Once it happens and Ted is slow to alert the police, perhaps at the cost of Mary Jo's life, the spin machine moves into place. But not before Ted, who is wholly unsuited to political maneuvering at this point, makes a number of bone-headed errors that must be cleaned up.

Curran gets a lot of material to work with here, and along with screenwriters Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan he makes the most of it. While the actual direction of the film is purely functional, the parallels drawn to today and Clarke's powerful performance are what make this such an engrossing story. I daresay Clarke is considerably more charismatic than Ted Kennedy was back then. It's tough to reconcile the shifty Ted Kennedy of 1969 with the stoic champion of the working class that he would be throughout his senatorial career, but you have to understand going in that this is not a film meant to bolster his reputation. It leaves him pretty scarred up, as Ted continually puts his own concerns ahead of any true justice for Mary Jo. Even his decision to reveal that it was him behind the wheel is a calculated one meant to gain sympathy, although he persists in claims that he will always follow his "true north" and do what's right. All women are given short shrift, not just Mary Jo. Olivia Thirlby plays Mary Jo's best friend Rachel Schiff, but she's barely given much to do other than be another of Kennedy's loyalists. Disappointing as the portrayal of women may be, it's a calculation that fits with the time and the all-male group of power players involved.

It's also interesting the depiction of the news cycle and how easily it could be manipulated. While today we both love and lament the speed which stories are broken, there was no Internet back then. There weren't dozens of news outlets picking apart every facet of the event. If Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick were to have happened within a year or two before his death in 2009, his career would have been over that day. But in 1969 there was room to maneuver and plot out a strategy. In this case, Ted and his spin doctors were helped by the Apollo moon landing and the country's fascination with space exploration. But mostly we see the effect that the name Kennedy has in swaying public perception and marshalling defenders. It's an early indicator of how the names Bush, Clinton, and Obama can steer opinion in these hyper-partisan times. Suffice it to say, if he were Ted Johnson and not Ted Kennedy he would have been toast. Instead he gets off with a slap on the writst, and goes on to have one of the longest senatorial careers in U.S. history, thus proving that his rewriting of history to paint himself as a victim worked.

So again, Chappaquiddick is not hero worship of the Kennedys like so many other movies made about the most famous family in political history. In the end, Ted selfishly gives up on his "true north", his belief in what's right, in order to do what's convenient. Sounds like your standard everyday politician, doesn't it? We hate those, don't we?  Chappaquiddick presents the Kennedys in a vastly different light than we're accustomed to seeing, and probably won't see again on the big screen for a long time.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

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Review: ‘Nostalgia,’ Starring Jon Hamm, Ellen Burstyn, And Catherine Keener

You could be forgiven for having forgotten much of Jon Hamm’s filmography. Yes, there was last summer’s Baby Driver, in which Hamm effectively went super-sinister and rocked a side-buzz haircut in a sexually thrilling way I didn’t expect. But there was also Keeping Up with the Joneses, before Gal Gadot was Wonder Woman; and his voice acting in Minions, which, whatever, fine; and Million Dollar Arm, that Disney movie about Indian teens playing baseball that no one saw; and his FBI agent role in The Town, in which he was overshadowed by practically every other cast member.

It’s not that Hamm is bad, but that his Don Draper shadow stretches so far—so he finally decides to lean into that with Nostalgia. Remember that scene in the season one finale of Mad Men where Don Draper pitches “the carousel,” talking about nostalgia and the twinge in the heart? That speech is basically what Alex Ross Perry’s latest film is, but stretched out to an unnecessarily long runtime. Hamm is solid in it, and fellow cast members Bruce Dern, Ellen Burstyn, Catherine Keener, and John Ortiz are expectedly great. But this movie shouldn’t have been two hours.

The film’s tagline is about “life, love, and the things we leave behind,” and so the movie examines three short narratives that link together by shared characters. What do these three arcs tell us about our possessions, how we treat them, and what memories are captured by them? The film opens with insurance agent Daniel (Ortiz), who speaks almost wondrously of his profession (“Every story has details I’ve never heard before. Every person I talk to, I learn something new. Not many people get to say that about their jobs”) when he meets Helen (Burstyn), a woman who has lost the house she shared with her late husband in a fire. Helen chose to save a baseball that was beloved by her husband, but faced with the awful devastation of the fire, she considers selling the ball, leading her to sports memorabilia dealer Will (Hamm). The film concludes with Will going to his hometown to clean out his parents’ house with his sister, Donna (Keener), who sees emotional value in items that Will can only assess practically.

Each character views stuff a different way, but the thorough line of Nostalgia is pretty straightforward: We assign emotions to objects to capture memories we cherish or to honor people who are no longer with us. That’s not a particularly new idea, but it is one that Burstyn, Hamm, and Keener explore well with their characters. Still, the long runtime means the film drags, and a late-movie plot twist feels particularly telegraphed. The performances in Nostalgia are strong, and no movie Hamm has tackled has felt more particularly tuned to his talents than this one, but the narrative isn’t unique enough to make the two-hour investment totally worth it.

Rating: 3 out of 5

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Dakota Johnson Joins Shia LaBeouf In Wrestling Drama 'The Peanut Butter Falcon'

It didn't take long for Dakota Johnson to become one of the most sought after actresses in Hollywood, and she's been keen to do a lot more than just Fifty Shades of Grey movies. She's now set to join the oddly-titled independent drama, The Peanut Butter Falcon, along with two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern (Nebraska) and the previously cast Shia LaBeouf.

The film is based on the true story of Zachary Gottsagen (Becoming Bulletproof), who will play himself, and his quest to become a professional wrestler. Zak is a high-functioning young man with Down Syndrome, who flees from the nursing home he's been living at in order to join a wrestling school in North Carolina. He's joined on the journey by a down on his luck outlaw (LaBeouf) who becomes his coach and ally.

Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz wrote the script and will direct, with shooting to begin this week.

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Matthias Schoenaerts, Judy Greer, And Bruce Dern Join Netflix's 'Our Souls At Night'

There's so much awesome in Netflix's original feature Our Souls at Night that it may their best pick up since expanding into movies. Last year we learned screen legends Robert Redford and Jane Fonda would reunite to lead the film, and a principal photography begins in a couple of days an excellent surrounding cast has been confirmed.

Matthias Schoenaerts (A Bigger Splash), Judy Greer (Ant-Man), Bruce Dern (Nebraska), and Iain Armitage (Big Little Lies) are co-starring in the film which will be directed by Ritesh Batra. Batra was at the helm of the lovely Indian romance The Lunchbox, which continues to be a favorite of mine. Kent Haruf's novel has been adapted by the stellar writing duo Michael H. Weber and Scott Neustadter (The Fault In Our Stars), telling the story of  two small town widowers living all alone in big empty houses who seek to forge a romantic connection.

That's a ton of talent, and if this were a theatrical effort I'd be first in line to see it. Better make sure my Netflix subscription stays up to date.

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Review: Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' With Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell, And More

Chances are you already know if Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is on the Christmas list this season. Tarantino is, as ever, and acquired taste who has only grown more stylized over the years. The Hateful Eight is perhaps his most indulgent film while at the same time one of the most faithful. This isn't an off-the-wall take on the Western genre like Django Unchained turned out to be; this is Tarantino fully embracing the likes of Sergio Leone, even going so far as to have the great Ennio Morricone provide a perfectly dusty score. But it's also Tarantino's most intimate and personal film in quite some time, harkening back to his breakout crime flick, Reservoir Dogs.

At its core, The Hateful Eight is a simple whodunit; a mystery in which every one of the scoundrels shacked up in the middle of post-Civil War Wyoming is a likely suspect. Of course, nothing is ever truly simple with Tarantino at the helm. The film finds the divisive cinephile exploring themes of racism and festering hatred at a time when wounds from the War still ran deep. Everybody's a bad guy here, again like Reservoir Dogs, and nobody makes you want to root for the bad guy better than Tarantino does.

Much of your enjoyment of The Hateful Eight will depend on your tolerance for Tarantino's long-windedness. The film is broken up into five chapters, led by a musical overture and split by an intermission old school-style, but it takes an eternity for the plot to actually kick in. For those who appreciate Tarantino's fondness for narrative minutia, this won't be a big deal at all. With a blustery blizzard swirling, a stagecoach rattles through the snow on the way to find some shelter. Inside are two of the film's colorfully-named antagonists, "The Hangman" John Ruth (Kurt Russell, perfectly suited to this kind grizzled character), and the convict he intends to see hanged, Daisy Dormegue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, all fangs and snake-tongued). Before they can get where they're going, two chance encounters hold them up. The first is white-hunting former Union soldier Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), who carries around a note written to him by President Abraham Lincoln. The second is Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the supposed new Sheriff of Red Rock, which happens to be where Daisy is meant to meet her fate. Coincidence? You know better than that.

Things start to get ugly or uglier when they arrive at Minnie's Haberdashery, which doesn't resemble the pit stop they were expecting. Instead of the usual owners they're met by four instantly-suspicious sorts who all resemble villains from out of a John Ford movie. The new caretaker is Bob The Mexican (Demian Bichir), who insists the owners are out of town; the roguish Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), the apparent hangman of Red Rock; tight-lipped and secretive cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen); and legendarily racist Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). Stuck in this broken down old shack with a hilariously unusable door and different political and social agendas at work, the fuse is lit for what is guaranteed to be an explosive dénouement.

Tarantino turns up the heat slowly, almost to an excruciating degree. It becomes clear that someone isn't who they claim to be, and it's Warren who is forced by extenuating circumstances (read: a murder attempt) to play detective.  And it's a mystery with real meat on its bones thanks to Tarantino's hearty screenplay which fleshes out each character in defined strokes, doling out generous amounts of levity to lighten the tension. There may be no better comic duo all year than Russell and Leigh, who are in literally every scene together for reasons best left unsaid. While definitely an ensemble it's Jackson who comes through with his usual brand of Tarantino-inspired braggadocio. He gets one long soliloquy that is both bizarre and strangely fitting, in which he ruffles racist feathers by forcing them to imagine his big black penis. Tarantino seems to have a fondness for the subject of racists obsessed with black male genitalia, and he takes that subject further than he's ever taken it before. Let's just leave it at that. 

With so many characters mostly stuck in one confined space for the film's duration, shooting in glorious 70mm doesn't seem to make a lot of sense. And yet it's strangely perfect, not only in the wide, snowy expanse of the outdoor scenes, but inside where it allows for a surprising level of detail. While it may seem sedentary at times, there's a lot going on in each and every scene which the broader Panavision makes clearer. Keep a close eye in the background or on the fringes and you might catch a character's subtle reactions to a passing comment. 

Where the film begins to unravel is, unfortunately, in the deflating reveal which comes after the perfectly-timed intermission. Unveiled mostly in an awesome flashback (which includes the always-great Zoe Bell, by the way, and an A-lister some may not expect), once it's over it leaves the story with little place to go but down and a lot of time to get there. Tarantino fills that space with a generous helping of gore and brutality. In particular there's a great deal of Leigh getting smacked around and beat like a mule; all of which her character takes with a bloody and knowing smile. 

The Hateful Eight is ultimately Tarantino hashing out the issue of racism, and his approach to it is brusque, pointed, and a little uncomfortable. But only he would have the stones to build such a thrilling Western homage around it. While some will continue to take issue with his stylistic touches, the violence, the language, whatever, Tarantino always has something he wants to say and we're better off every time he gets to say it.

Rating: 4 out of 5

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The Gang's All Here in New Posters for Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight'

*UPDATED with posters featuring the rest of The Hateful Eight cast!

When Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight arrives this Christmas it's going to be a very big deal. Not in the way every Tarantino film is a major event, but in a much larger way as he takes it on a traveling roadshow in full 70mm format, and the latest poster wants to make sure you see it as he intended.

Kurt Russell and Jennifer Jason Leigh grace the new poster for The Hateful Eight in their roles as"The Hangman" John Ruth and "The Prisoner" Daisy Domergue. And right there branded in the bottom corner is the Ultra Panavision 70 stamp, promising this will be the first movie in nearly 50 years to be released in that format.  Russell and Leigh's characters are just two of the eight undesirables stuck in Minnie’s Habberdashery as a snowstorm rages. The rest of the cast includes Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, Demian Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Zoe Bell, and some kind of cameo by Channing Tatum. Here's the official synopsis:

In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…

The Hateful Eight gets a two-week 70mm run beginning Christmas Day, followed by a digital theatrical release on January 8, 2016. [EW]

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