Apple TV+ would like to invite you to watch a Christmas movie starring Will Ferrell as a naïve believer. No, not that one, this other one. The trailer for Spirited, co-starring Ryan Reynolds, is out right after Halloween and let us tell you … this is a Christmas movie. Not only does it have Will Ferrell of Elf fame, it’s based on the plot of A Christmas Carol of Muppet fame.
Courtesy of Focus Features Today’s New York Sun asks whether Lust, Caution, Ang Lee’s explicit espionage thriller, will finally be the movie that makes the NC-17 rating legitimate in the eyes of moviegoers and theater owners. In particular, the Sun makes the slightly uncomfortable but probably correct case that Lust, Caution has a chance to legitimize the rating not just because Lee is a marquee director, and not just because the film won the Venice Film Festival, but because the sex in the movie is, well, straight.
Mel Gibson (left) and Will Ferrell in Daddy’s Home 2 In Daddy’s Home 2, the sequel to 2015’s $250 million–grossing hit that’s in theaters Friday, Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell play “co-dads” — the biological father and stepdad to a pair of Boston-area kids — who put aside their differences to maintain progressive domestic bliss. John Lithgow is Pop-pop, an exuberant fussbudget fond of ugly sweaters and kissing his son on the lips by way of hello.
Photo: Getty Images (left); Vintage (right)
In a fall of deflated box-office expectations, two movies that seem still to be on track to reap commercial success and awards attention are the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men and Ridley Scott’s American Gangster. Could the confluence of the Coens’ Cormac McCarthy movie and box-office success for Scott mean that Scott’s film of Blood Meridian, McCarthy’s famously violent 1985 Western, might finally get off the ground?
Will Smith. Will Smith tried not to let personal baggage the Slap keep him from this year’s Oscars race. But after the Academy barred the movie star from attending its glittering ceremony for the next decade after he smacked presenter Chris Rock, he ultimately failed to once again secure a Best Actor nod in what would have been back-to-back nominations. Described by Smith as a “film about freedom,” Emancipation, out December 9, is a historical epic based on the true story of Gordon, a formerly enslaved man who posed for grotesque photographs of his bare, whipped back, which strengthened the abolitionist movement in 1863.
The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial sends you out interrogating your beliefs — about war, about service, about madness, even about right and wrong. The Venice world premiere of William Friedkin’s final picture, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, began with a tribute to the late director (who died less than a month ago) from festival chief Alberto Barbera and jury president Damien Chazelle, the latter of whom gave a moving speech about the filmmaker, calling him “the kind of director who made the rest of us directors look safe.
Kristen Bell and Ted Danson might be the marquee names of The Good Place, but for many viewers, the breakout star of the afterlife comedy is William Jackson Harper, who portrays anxious, indecisive philosophy professor Chidi Anagonye. Vulture caught up with Jackson, who’s also currently starring in Zoe Kazan’s off-Broadway play After the Blast, to ask him about what makes Chidi so relatable, the appeal of dystopian stories, and how it feels to act with hundreds of needles in your face.
Willow Smith is training to be a savant. She slips this in casually, and with conviction, over the phone while on a break from touring with Jhené Aiko to chill with “the fam” and friends for a few days. That “fam,” of course, is one of the most famous in the world: Her father is Will Smith, her mother is Jada Pinkett Smith, and her older brothers are Jaden and Trey.
Christopher Nolan is an established master of cinematic mystery, both onscreen and off-, and true to form, Interstellar arrives this week shrouded in promotional obfuscation. (Don’t reveal the basic plot! Don’t reveal the reveals! Don’t reveal the things we’ve asked you not to reveal!) I will wholeheartedly admit (as a publicly confessed spoilerphile) it’s one of the few recent films I’ve seen where I was glad I knew very little about the film’s third act (and fourth, and fifth, and coda) going in.
Filippo Scotti in The Hand of God. In soccer lore, the “hand of God” refers to Diego Maradona’s legendary first goal against England in the 1986 World Cup quarterfinals, a shot he practically punched into the net. The illegal hand ball went unseen by the refs in a game Argentina took 2-1, on its way to winning the world championship one week later. The English were understandably salty about it for years, even though Maradona was the undisputed greatest player in the world at the time and Argentina clearly the better team.