BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC A few weeks ago Bradley Cooper kept up his tradition of hosting a Philly “friends and family” screening of his latest film, this time with his directorial debut A Star is Born. Cooper who got his start playing the “pretty boy” on Alias, proved he could also be the “funny guy” in The Hangover but with A Star Is Born he’s effortlessly transitioned into the role of auteur. His highly-acclaimed re-imagining of Star, with songs furnished by Cooper and co-star Lady Gaga, is the tour de force unveiling of Cooper’s emergent triple threat: director, […]
GEEK SQUAD: Venom Defanged
Venom was one of Marvel’s most popular characters in the ‘90s. Built like a WWF Superstar, he looked cool in his black Spider-Man-esque onesie. And like any “good” 90’s comic Venom was extreme. He would straight up murder his enemies and eat them. But the comic struggled to figure out if Venom and his alter ego Eddie Brock was a hero or a villain or in between. So too does Sony’s Venom, the studio’s first attempt at a Spider-Man Shared Universe. But with no Spider-Man. And while that can work, it just doesn’t. Tom Hardy plays an Eddie Brock […]
CINEMA: Star Wars
A STAR IS BORN (Directed by Bradley Cooper, 135 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been hard to ignore the buzz surrounding the latest incarnation of A Star is Born, which marks not only Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut, but also the first starring role in a feature film for Lady Gaga. The pop icon had a rather successful transition from music to television taking home an Emmy for her work on American Horror Story, and this time she’s here to prove she can do it all and Cooper helps her get the ball across the goal […]
GEEK SQUAD: What’s Not To Love About The Captain Marvel Trailer That Just Dropped?
So, the Captain Marvel trailer finally dropped. First of all, seeing Brie Larson crash land on Earth and Samuel L Jackson narrate the first half of the trailer completely sells the film — it’s set-in-the-’90s trailer and jammed pack with action scenes. Captain Marvel is such a complicated character that giving a detailed history will be exhausting and pointless given that the film is invariably going to streamline her sprawling back story to avoid forcing audiences to juggle alien sleeper agents, cosmic spaceship accidents that merged an alien DNA with a human, children that were genetically aged, X-Men member Rogue […]
CINEMA: Let Us Prey
THE PREDATOR (Directed by Shane Black, 107 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC It’s been eight years since the Predator last stalked our multiplexes and he’s back thanks to director Shane Black (who played Hawkins in the original), who reunites the franchise with its 80’s action roots. To fully realize this vision Shane has also enlisted co-writer Fred Dekker the man who gave us such ‘80s monster classics as The Monster Squad, Night of the Creeps and House. Given those two pedigrees, you know what to expect here, the film is as heavy on the laughs as […]
CINEMA: Paul Dano’s Directorial Debut Is FIRE
INDIEWIRE: IFC Films has released the first official trailer for “Wildife,” and it’s not hard to see why Paul Dano’s feature filmmaking debut is one of the most talked about films of the year. The 33-year-old actor, best known for masterful performances in films such as “There Will Be Blood,” “Little Miss Sunshine,” and “Prisoners,” has evidently learned a lot observing many of cinema’s greatest living auteurs. The family drama premiered to much acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and also screened as the opening night film in La Semaine de la Critique at the 2018 […]
INCOMING: Cinephilia
RELATED: The 27th Philadelphia Philm Phestival
CINEMA: Free Passes To A VIP Searching Screening
Searching, which opens August 31stis the new cyber thriller starring John Cho as David Kim, a father whose 16-year-old daughter has gone missing. After 37 hours and not a single lead by the investigation, David decides to look on his daughter’s laptop for answers. This leads David down the rabbit hole,the film uses technology and the way we internalize it to tell its story of one man’s search for his daughter in the dark recesses of the internet. We have 60 passes for two to an advance screening Thursday, August 23rd at 7:30PM at the United Artist, King of […]
GEEK SQUAD: How Does DC Films Unf*ck Itself?
BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Marvel Studios has dominated the 2018 box office, raking in $3 billion from just two movies: Black Panthe and Avengers: Infinity War. And their success isn’t limited to the huge, highly anticipated movies with 200 superheroes shoved into them. People were even talking about B-List characters Ant-Man and The Wasp. Meanwhile, Warner Bros. Pictures’ DC Extended Universe is still fighting for relevance after Man of Steel (2013) launched the franchise with a whimper and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) and Suicide Squad (2016) transformed the franchise into meme fodder. Last year’s […]
CINEMA: This Is America
BLACKKKLANSMAN (Directed by Spike Lee, 135 minutes, USA, 2018) BY DAN TABOR FILM CRITIC BlacKkKlansman is the real-life story of how the first African American police officer in the Colorado Springs Police Department infiltrated the Klu Klux Klan. Starring John David Washington (son of Denzel) as Ron and Adam Driver as his partner, BlacKkKlansman proves to be one of Spike Lee’ most ferocious social commentaries to date cleverly disguised as a hilarious buddy cop movie. Lee uses the very relevant narrative to comment both on the backsliding of race relations in America and how it wasn’t exactly an accident […]
CINEMA: We Are Young
BY MARIAH HALL Bo Burnham didn’t intend to write and direct a movie about eighth graders, it just worked out that way. In the New Yorker, he confessed, “I wanted to talk about anxiety…Anxiety makes me feel like a terrified thirteen year old.” Burnham started out as a YouTube star in 2006 and managed to flip viral video fame into a comedy career. Now he has written and directed his first film, Eighth Grade, about a middle-school girl named Kayla (Elsie Fisher). She makes YouTube videos that no one watches, aside from her endearing father, played by Josh Hamilton, signing […]
CINEMA: Free Tix To A Special VIP Advanced Screening Of Unfriended: The Dark Web Wednesday
Blumhouse Tilt is at it again slicing off another piece of high concept low-budget genre this time with the sequel to the mega-profitable found footage horror film Unfriended. Unfriended: Dark Web,which hits theaters next Friday, July 20th ups the ante of the found footage premise of the original with the events in this stand-alone tale of online horror transpiring in real time. The film centers on a millennial who happens upon a cache of hidden files on his new MacBook, luring him and his friends on a trip into the depths of the dark web. They soon discover someone has […]
CINEMA: Good Things Come In Small Packages
ANT MAN & THE WASP (Dir. by Peyton Reed, 118 minutes, USA, 2018) BY RICHARD SUPLEE GEEK SPACE CORRESPONDENT Where does the Marvel Cinematic Universe go after super soldiers, scientists, gods, raccoons, aliens, and an entire secret nation of Wakanda fought together against a single threat in Avengers: Infinity War? They scaled down — literally. Ant-Man and The Wasp is superhero story with less stakes. But that is not a bad thing. This film is a more personal story. Paul Rudd’s Scott Lang is a divorced dad just trying to keep his life together. He is focused on his […]