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Netflix is riding into the new year with one of the most brutal depictions of expansion in the American West thanks to a relentlessly intense mini-series called American Primeval. Created and written by Mark L. Smith, with direction by Peter Berg, American Primeval revolves around Sara (Betty Gilpin) and her son, Devin (Preston Mota) traveling through harsh and unforgiving territory with a survivalist, Isaac (Taylor Kitsch), to escape a grim fate and find a new home. While making the journey, they experience violent collisions with cults, religious zealots, cutthroats, and lawmakers willing to kill to create a new world.

To mark the arrival of American Primeval, we spoke with the show’s director, Peter Berg, the Indigenous Consultant Julie O’Keefe, and lead actors Betty Gilpin (Sara), Taylor Kitsch (Isaac), Dane DeHaan (Jacob Pratt), Kim Coates (Bringham Young), Derek Hinkey (Red Feather), and Saura Lightfoot-Leon (Abish Pratt) about their respective roles,...

Plot: While exploring the American West, a small group travels across the plains, experiencing violent collisions with cults, religion, and men and women fighting for control of the new world.

Review: When most people think of the Western genre, they envision actors like Clint Eastwood, John Wayne, James Stewart, and Gary Cooper playing six-shooter superheroes with leathery skin, shiny spurs, and a devil-may-care attitude. As icons of an idealized American West, these men often shine as paragons of virtue, justice, and heroism. Still, history bends to the will of the storyteller, someone who can glorify the cowboy and make their actions appear pure and righteous. American Primeval offers no such quarter to its gun-slingers. Though the series presents a fictionalized and dramatized recount of 1857, its depiction of harsh living conditions, cutthroat politics, and relentless violence is all too honest. Saddle up, folks! We’re riding along one of Netflix’s...

It has been a long road seeing wrestling superstar The Rock evolve into the brand entertainment tycoon Dwayne Johnson of today. The hulking star has released a new Christmas adventure movie in time for the holiday season with Red One. Now, it seems like Johnson’s everywhere and he’s ingrained in pop culture. But back in the early millennium, he was still crossing over into acting and while he already had some success out of the gate, there’s one movie that was seen as his true arrival to be cinema’s next action hero. In today’s episode, we talk The Rundown and how it held up after 21 years.

The Rundown feels like the last breath of the kinds of action movies that dominated the 80s and 90s. This is the era when every movie from stars, like Stallone or Schwarzenegger, would mainly highlight their ability to fight hordes of bad guys,...

The trailer for Back in Action has arrived. The upcoming Netflix action-comedy, which debuts in 2025, will be the first Cameron Diaz movie in more than a decade following her retirement from acting in 2014, the year in which she starred in Annie, Sex Tape, and The Other Woman. Directed by Horrible Bosses' Seth Gordon and also starring Jamie Foxx, the movie follows two former CIA operatives who are now suburban parents. However, their past comes back to haunt them when their cover is blown. The ensemble cast also includes Glenn Close, Kyle Chandler, Andrew Scott, and Jamie Demetriou.

Netflix has now unveiled the official trailer for Back in Action. It opens with Cameron Diaz delivering a speech about being rejuvenated and feeling alive again that could be interpreted as a regular marital conversation, but is intercut with a series of high-octane action scenes including Jamie Foxx using a flamethrower. What follows...

When Cameron Diaz was still in high school, she signed her first modeling contract and appeared in ads for Levi's and Calvin Klein. She became recognizable nationwide when she appeared on the cover of Seventeen Magazine in 1990. Fittingly enough, she was actually 17. Diaz continued to model for a few years and even appeared in a Coca-Cola campaign before successfully auditioning for the role of Tina in Chuck Russell's comedic superhero noir "The Mask" in 1994. The star of "The Mask" was Jim Carrey, then experiencing a massive career upswing, and Diaz was swept up with him, becoming a household name almost immediately.

Diaz almost instantly became a media sensation, and her acting career took off. In the years after "The Mask," Diaz appeared in notable indie dramas like "She's the One," "The Last Supper," and "Feeling Minnesota," all of them with notable co-stars. By 1997, she moved into Hollywood's top tier,...

I’m no historian, but America circa 1857 was a brutal, eye-opening time in the nation’s history. During these dark days, blood and bodies enriched the soil while poisoning the minds and hearts of people fighting to survive. Today, Pete Berg takes audiences back to a time of strife for Netflix‘s latest limited series, American Primeval. The six-episode series hails from The Revenant writer Mark L. Smith, with Berg directing and executive producing. On Tuesday, Netflix unveiled the show’s January 9, 2025, release date and first-look images for the upcoming series, depicting an oppressive atmosphere with bone-crunching combat, unions crumbling to pieces, and non-negotiable alliances paving a road to ruin.

Here’s the official logline for American Primeval courtesy of Netflix:

This is America…1857. Up is down, pain is everywhere, and innocence and tranquility are losing the battle to hatred and fear. Peace is the shrinking minority, and very few...

Zoë Kravitz's directorial debut Blink Twice (formerly Pussy Island) comes out swinging like Emerald Fennell with Promising Young Woman. Kravitz and co-writer E.T. Feigenbaum unleash womanly rage without a hint of subtlety, but Kravitz's behind-the-camera demeanor stays cool as a cucumber. Aspects of Promising Young Woman, The Hunt, and Ready or Not influence a searing satirization about the sexist one-percent, lobbing grenades at manipulative therapy discourse and empty celebrity apologies. Blink Twice is appropriately despicable, excessively indulgent, darkly comedic, and playing for keeps. What a first showing, Ms. Kravitz.

Channing Tatum stars as Slater King, a once disgraced, now remorseful tech gazillionaire who healed through therapy after allegations chased him from the public eye. Naomi Ackie plays Frida, a lowly caterer who sneaks in front of Slater at a gallery event. Frida snaps her heel shank, and out of nowhere, Slater sweeps in like her savior. They flirt and...

Un thriller psicológico que se estrena este mes de agosto. © Warner Bros

Warner Bros ha publicado un nuevo tráiler de su nuevo y salvaje thriller psicológico, Parpadea dos veces (originalmente titulado Pussy Island).

Parpadea dos veces sigue al magnate de la tecnología Slater King (Channing Tatum), que conoce a la camarera Frida (Naomi Ackie) en su gala de recaudación de fondos. Allí saltan chispas. Él la invita a pasar unas vacaciones de ensueño con sus amigos en su isla privada. Un auténtico paraíso. Las noches salvajes se mezclan con mañanas bañadas por el sol y todo el mundo se lo pasa en grande. Nadie quiere que el viaje termine, pero cuando empiezan a suceder cosas extrañas, Frida intuye que algo anda mal en ese lugar. Tendrá que descubrir la verdad si quiere salir viva de la fiesta.

La película supone el debut como directora de Zoë Kravitz (The Batman), con...

Channing Tatum y Naomi Ackie protagonizan este thriller psicológico. © Warner Bros

Warner Bros ha publicado el primer tráiler de su nuevo y salvaje thriller psicológico, “Parpadea Dos Veces” (originalmente titulado “Pussy Island”).

“Parpadea Dos Veces” sigue al magnate de la tecnología Slater King (Channing Tatum), que conoce a la camarera Frida (Naomi Ackie) en su gala de recaudación de fondos. Allí saltan chispas. Él la invita a pasar unas vacaciones de ensueño con sus amigos en su isla privada. Un auténtico paraíso. Las noches salvajes se mezclan con mañanas bañadas por el sol y todo el mundo se lo pasa en grande. Nadie quiere que el viaje termine, pero cuando empiezan a suceder cosas extrañas, Frida intuye que algo anda mal en ese lugar. Tendrá que descubrir la verdad si quiere salir viva de la fiesta.

La película supone el debut como directora de Zoë Kravitz (“The Batman”), con un...

John Ainslie’s Do Not Disturb portrays what nastiness festers behind locked hotel room doors in this heavy dose of psychedelic anarchy. What feels like a stripped-down mashup of Bones & All, Very Bad Things, and The Hangover sends broken people on a bad and bloody trip. It might not look that way at first, because Ainslie wants the initial twenty to thirty minutes to feel more dramatically inclined. That’s when the peyote ingestion begins, and terrible decisions breed despicable outcomes in a fashion that’ll please viewers who appreciate a savage brand of tonal chaos.

Canadian newlyweds Chloe (Kimberly Laferriere) and Jack (Rogan Christopher) travel to Miami to reignite what passion once existed. They’re your typical front-page couple in divorce pamphlets. Chloe’s still grieving after a failed pregnancy while Jack focuses on getting blitzed, proper man-child style. That’s when opportunity presents itself — a delusional man...

1996 was a dark year for The Italian Stallion. Sylvester Stallone had two pricey flops in 1995, with Judge Dredd and Assassins. His Christmas of 1996 disaster movie release, Daylight, was another box office bomb. Just a few years before, Stallone had made a significant comeback with Cliffhanger and Demolition Man, but now the whole industry was changing. Carolco, the company that financed some of the era’s biggest hits, had gone bankrupt, and action movies were getting smaller and smaller. Arnold Schwarzenegger was on the decline, with Eraser a smaller hit than usual. Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal were only a few years away from making direct-to-video movies. What was Sly to do? The result is one of his very best movies –Cop Land – as we explore in the episode of Sylvester Stallone Revisited.

In the 1990s, one of the biggest stars on the planet was Sylvester Stallone’s former protege,...

According to rudimentary Googling, Apple has a generally well-regarded parental leave policy. But according to the output at Apple TV+, there is anxiety in the water in Cupertino (or in the company’s Los Angeles offices).

Dropping this Friday, The Changeling is the second Apple TV+ series in five years blending fairy tale and horror to delve into maternal and paternal anxieties about nature, nurture and the price paid when parents are forced to leave babies behind to return to work.

Perhaps not as bluntly effective as Servant, The Changeling is an admirably ambitious series, especially on thematic levels, where it seems to be bursting with commentary on 21st century parenting. As storytelling, though, Kelly Marcel’s adaptation of Victor Lavalle’s novel is a mess. Though the series isn’t lurching through time and frames of reality without intent, its refusal to build any sort of momentum becomes increasingly frustrating.

Following his BIFA nominated feature films Tucked (2019) and Justine (2021), writer/director Jamie Patterson’s latest continues his look into the untold stories of those on the margins in his hometown of Brighton.

Starring up and coming talent George Webster (Disney+ series Wedding Season and upcoming AppleTV+ series Masters of the Air and Paramount+ series The Doll Factory) and Skye Lourie, and featuring Alice Lowe, Joe Wilkinson, April Pearson, Jordan Stephens, Joss Porter, Benedict Garrett and Patrick Bergin, God‘s Petting You is a darkly twisted comedy charged with erotic thriller energy in its exploration of the depths and depravity of the Brighton underworld.

Synopsis:

At a self-help group, cheeky young Charlie, a down on his luck heroin addict, falls in love with the ravishing ‘Tattoo Girl’, a struggling sex addict. Teaming up they hatch a hair-brained scheme to steal a small fortune from a criminally inclined porn star, a plan that’s guaranteed to fail.

Exclusive: He’ll be back…silver screen icon Arnold Schwarzenegger is set for a movie comeback after a four-year hiatus with action-thriller Breakout, which financier and sales firm Anton is launching ahead of the Cannes market.

Expendables 4 filmmaker Scott Waugh is aboard to direct the feature, which will see Arnie take on the lead role of Terry Reynolds. When his stepson, Daniel, is framed and sentenced to 25 years in a foreign country, Reynolds makes a daring jailbreak to save him and must overcome an overzealous prison warden in a race against time to avoid capture and flee the country.

Shoot is due to kick off this year in Eastern Europe. Pic is being financed and produced by Greenland outfit Anton and Off The Pier Productions (Canary Black). Anton is handling world sales, with UTA Independent Film Group co-repping domestic rights.

Richard D’Ovidio wrote the screenplay which is based on...

NBCUniversal’s international flight plan for Peacock starts this week: Starting Nov. 16, Sky TV and Now customers in the U.K. and Ireland will get access to the streaming service for no additional fee.

Comcast had announced plans this summer to launch Peacock as a free add-on for Sky’s satellite TV customers in Europe, representing a base of close to 20 million households. According to NBCU, after the “soft launch” in the U.K. and Ireland, Peacock will continue to roll out across Sky platforms in territories including Germany, Italy, Austria and Switzerland in the next few months.

Sky TV customers and subscribers to the Now Entertainment package in the U.K. and Ireland will get “early access” to the new ad-supported Peacock destination, with original and library TV shows and movies from across NBCU although the content availability will differ from what’s available on Peacock in the U.

This latest round-up of new Blu-rays (and one DVD!) includes two films that drop on January 28, and two you can scoop up right this second. The two films destined for shelves next week are Terminator: Dark Fate and Very Bad Things. The others – well, see for yourself. These are the new Blu-ray releases you should check […]

The post New on Blu-ray: ‘Terminator: Dark Fate’, ‘Pain and Glory’, ‘Very Bad Things’, ‘Antrum’ appeared first on /Film.

The casino has been a major location for films since the advent of cinema. It has been used as a setting due to its familiarity, but also because it is well known for being a place of excitement. It has served as not only a backdrop but as the main theme for movies like Martin Scorsese’s Casino in 1995 and Lewis Milestone’s Ocean’s 11 in 1960, while it has been used as a minor setting in countless pictures from Peter Berg’s Very Bad Things in 1998 to Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther in 2018. It has even become a long-running cliché in the Eon Productions Bond films that James Bond will enter a casino and play a table game at some point.

Casino scenes have often been enjoyable and have provided excitement for the viewer, but just how realistic are they?

High Stakes and High Danger

Casinos have long been recognized...

Exclusive: Screen Gems is developing a feature adaptation of Edwin F. Becker’s book True Haunting which The Call scribe Richard D’Ovidio is writing.

Cindy Cowan has optioned the book, and will produce with Steve Bersch and Scott Strauss overseeing the project. Screen Gems’ Brian Dukes will oversee for the studio.

True Haunting is the terrifying true story of the first televised exorcism on NBC in 1971. Millions around the country watched the program. The NBC news segment was a success, the exorcism was not. Instead, it made things worse for the Becker family who lived there. Much worse.

D’Ovidio (pictured above) is best known for writing The Call starring Halle Berry and The Forger with John Travolta and Christopher Plummer. He also wrote the spec script for Eye In The Sky which sold to Millennium Films in 2015 with Simon West directing.

Cowan (pictured above) has produced several films...

Stars: Tyler Thirnbeck, Anthony Stratton, Michael Vlamis, Mitch Westphal, Hays McEachern, Shara McGlinn, Barrington Vaxtor, Tj Morris | Written and Directed by Joe Clarke

It’s 2018 we know the drill, group of friends get together to celebrate the upcoming nuptials of one of there own. Coke, strippers, a yacht and copious amounts of alcohol… Surely this won’t end well?! Yes we have seen it all before in films like Very Bad Things, Stag or The Hangover. So why give Spiral your time? I mean what could possibly keep you entertained..? Did I mention the whole inter-dimensional aspect? No, Well there is one and damn does that flip this somewhat tired genre on its head, turning it into a high concept mind bending psychological twist-y turn-y thriller…

Intrigued? You bloody should be.

As billed up top, Spiral is essentially a bachelor party gone wrong type of deal. Six somewhat estranged friends...

Mile 22“Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” This astonishing quotation comes from an essay by American journalist H. L. Mencken. Writing in 1919 about a certain rage perceived in new writing from Ezra Pound, Mencken at first expresses tongue in cheek sympathy with Pound's anger—“the stupidity he combats is actually almost unbearable”—before dismissing it as detrimental to the writer’s poetry. Put into the mouth of John Malkovich’s CIA honcho James Bishop in Peter Berg’s latest film Mile 22, however, this incendiary quotation becomes much more ambiguous—particularly since there is no citation given, appearing as it does to be just another whimsical thought spoken out loud by this eccentric character. Bishop, as head of a special black ops division, is deadly serious and clearly sympathetic towards the sentiment. Whether the film itself is remains another story,...

No! Don’t run away! Where’s your Halloween spirit? Yes, Halloweentown (1998) is a Disney Channel movie, but that in and of itself isn’t a bad thing; if you’re looking to introduce your kids to horror, it’s better to pitch them some underhands than speedy overhands. (I don’t really know baseball.) In a cynical and bitterly crumbling world, it’s nice to know that a bit of low-key innocent charm still exists.

Originally airing Saturday, October 17th, Halloweentown was a big hit for the channel, and spawned three sequels over the ensuing years. If you’re looking for some smiles, good performances and charming effects, Halloweentown is a fun place to visit.

Let’s open up our mouse eared (insert groan here) TV Guide and see what’s up:

Halloweentown (Saturday, Disney)

An adolescent girl realizes with the help of her grandmother that she’s a...

Scarlett Johansson headlines Rough Night finally arrives in the UK. Here's our review...

At what point does a hen do become a hen don't? In Rough Night, the new comedy thriller from the makers of Broad City, it's around the time that a cheeky night of drinking and novelty penis props turns to involuntary manslaughter, and things quickly escalate into a mashup of Very Bad Things and Bridesmaids.

Jess (Scarlett Johansson) is the bride-to-be; a driven senatorial candidate who's taking a weekend off from her campaign for her bachelorette party. Her college friends Alice (Jillian Bell), Blair (Zoë Kravitz) and Frankie (Ilana Glazer), and her Australian friend Pippa (Kate McKinnon) converge on Miami for a boozy, drug-fuelled weekend away that quickly spirals out of control after the accidental death of a male stripper in their party house.

Outside of the obvious reasons for not wanting to get caught, each of...

Scarlett Johansson and gang can’t conjure any chemistry, or many laughs, in this dire tale of a hen party gone wrong

This gender-swap of Peter Berg’s 1998 film Very Bad Things is a Very Bad Thing indeed. Scarlett Johansson stars as Jess, a wannabe politician and bride-to-be who is whisked off to Miami by her college gal pals for her bachelorette party. The gang (comprising Jillian Bell, Zoë Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon and no detectable chemistry) accidentally kill a male stripper and must figure out what to do with the body. McKinnon gets a couple of good lines as Jess’s Aussie friend Pip (“singer-songwriter is the dream; party clown is the reality”), but even the film’s saltiness feels safe. Gags about piss and penis pasta, vibrators and self-waxing strips confuse vagina-related “jokes” with a feminist perspective, as signalled by Jess’s plan to win a game...

by Eric Blume

My assignment for Tfe was a review of the movie Rough Night. But since I was not raised in a barn, nor raised by wolves, my mother once told me if you can’t find something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. So we’ll keep it short on Rough Night itself. It’s actually depressing how bad this movie is, a twist on a rather good mainstream movie called Very Bad Things, back in the Cameron Diaz days of 1998. That Peter Berg film had a bit of an edge as it followed several guy friends on a bachelor party who find themselves in a dead hooker situation. Rough Night is the distaff version of this tale, but the inept script, bad performances, and bland direction make it a tough sit. The film’s five actresses (Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Zoe Kravitz, Jillian Bell,...

Zoe Kravitz, Ilana Glazer, Scarlett Johansson, and Jillian Bell star in Lucia Aniello’s bachelorette party comedy Rough Night, Photo by Macall Polay. Courtesy of Columbia/Sony Pictures.

Scarlett Johansson leads a cast of raucous women characters in a comedy that does more than just flip the usual bachelor party trope on its head, in Rough Night. The result is a refreshing take on buddy comedy that not only turns the tables on gender but completely nails how women really interact with each other, in a fitfully funny comedy.

Besides a strong female lead cast, Rough Night is directed by a woman, Lucia Aniello, who also co-wrote the script and is one of the producers. Unlike the typical male-written script, these female characters are spot-on and interact like real women do, even if the situation is over-the-top comedy. While the women characters and how they interact is refreshingly accurate, the humor is sometimes uneven.

There is no way you can see the new comedy Rough Night and not compare it to its obvious inspirations — chiefly Bridesmaids (the movie that launched a thousand imitators), The Hangover (ditto), Bachelor Party, Very Bad Things, and even that comic heirloom Weekend At Bernie’s. So while it doesn’t get points for originality, Rough Night does score a lot of laughs even if this particular bachelorette party sometimes sails way over the top in pursuit of them. As I say in my…...

Four women go wild at a Miami bachelorette party for their Bff Jess (Scarlett Johansson), an uptight candidate for state senator who has to work through some control issues. Good premise. It's club time for the ladies – Frankie (Ilana Glazer), a lesbian activist, and her former lover, real-estate diva Blair (Zoë Kravitz); Pippa (SNL Mvp Kate McKinnon), Jess's Aussie bud from her year abroad; and schoolteacher Alice (Jillian Bell), the college party animal who never reformed and still feels no shame over her rep as a "foot-job girl." Great cast.

Mixing equal parts of “The Hangover,” “Very Bad Things,” and “Bridesmaids,” “Rough Night” is a comedy cocktail that goes down easy. It adheres a bit too closely to the recipe established by its predecessors, but it works well enough to keep the audience laughing. Written by director Lucia Aniello and co-star Paul W. Downs, the film is at its strongest when its humor dives into the deep end of the female experience – or any time Kate McKinnon is on screen.

Continue reading ‘Rough Night’ Is A Comedy Cocktail That Goes Down Easy [Review] at The Playlist.

2017-06-14T12:13:10-07:00'Rough Night' Treads Tired Territory

Way back before Friday Night Lights put him on the map as a writer-director, Peter Berg made a deservedly forgotten black comedy called Very Bad Things, about a debauched Vegas bachelor party cut short by the buzzkill of a prostitute getting impaled on a coat hook. Oops. That film at least committed to its sourness, whereas Rough Night, which derails the revelry of a Miami bachelorette weekend by similar means, evinces little conviction of any kind. Mostly, it's a flavorless stew of elements from other, not necessarily better, movies that starts dying around the same time as the unintended victim of the girls gone wild.

That's disappointing given that the movie is directed and co-written by two of the script team on Broad City. It also features Ilana Glazer, the co-creator and star of that sharp...

With a title that most studio comedies set over a single evening could adopt, Rough Night riffs on Very Bad Things, Bridesmaids, The Hangover — and even some Jawbreaker and Weekend at Bernie’s, for good measure — as murder and farce coalesce at a bachelorette party. It’s the sort of premise one hopes will wring out a bit of tension and a good deal of laughs as its talented ensemble walk a high-wire act of crime. While Lucia Aniello (one of many from Broad City involved here) brings a certain energy in her directorial debut and the cast do comedically click, Rough Night too often feels watered-down with a blatant disregard for basic logic, resulting in a comedy that’s ultimately more exasperating than clever.

Though they rarely reunite since their party-hard halcyon days of college, Jess (Scarlett Johansson), Alice (Jillian Bell), Frankie (Ilana Glazer), and Blair (Zoë Kravitz) are...

Lucia Aniello’s Rough Night isn’t alone in its ladies-gone-wild practices (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore’s Bad Moms most recently comes to mind), but her feature debut takes an aggressive stance that equal efforts undersell. Aniello’s uniting roar shakes the foundation of Hollywood’s raunch-comedy boy’s club. This gender-swapped Very Bad Things does lady-bonding right, and without “girls only” exclusivity. In a post-film Q&A, Aniello and co-writer/star Paul W. Downs admitted they think women are just funnier than men – and with material this giddily unhinged, you’ll get no argument from me. Pop them bottles and swim through those seas of dicks, ladies. You’ve earned it.

Scarlett Johansson stars as straight-laced Jess, a hopeful politician whose Miami bachelorette party reunites old college friends. Blair (Zoë Kravitz) leaves behind her custody battle, Frankie (Ilana Glazer) takes a break from full-time activism and Alice (Jillian Bell...

Way back before Friday Night Lights put him on the map as a writer-director, Peter Berg made a deservedly forgotten black comedy called Very Bad Things, about a debauched Las Vegas bachelor party cut short by the buzzkill of a prostitute getting impaled on a coat hook. Oops. That film at least committed to its sourness, whereas Rough Night, which derails the revelry of a Miami bachelorette weekend by similar means, evinces little conviction of any kind. Mostly, it's a flavorless stew of elements from other, not necessarily better, movies that starts dying around the same time as the unintended...

If Rough Night teaches anything, it's that something will always go wrong at a bachelorette party. From losing the groom in the Hangover to accidentally killing a prostitute in Very Bad Things, a next-day headache is the least of these characters' worries. The chaos all leads up to the latest comedy, Rough Night.

The film, hitting theaters June 16, stars Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Ilana Glazer and Jillian Bell.

Before seeing the newest party gone wrong, see below a list of bachelor and bachelorette movies with some crazy adventures. 

...

I've gone on record saying that I'm looking forward to Rough Night. I like how dark it seems to get in the trailer (basically it looks like a female version of Very Bad Things), and I enjoy the cast. Even more than that, I'm a fan of Comedy Central's Broad City, which this movie shares a star (Ilana Glazer) and writer/director Lucia Aniello. So with the release... Read More...

“Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover” is a proverb whose simple existence proves the fact impressionable souls will do so without fail. This monthly column focuses on the film industry’s willingness to capitalize on this truth, releasing one-sheets to serve as not representations of what audiences are to expect, but as propaganda to fill seats. Oftentimes they fail miserably.

A five Friday month means a lot of films will be hitting multiplexes and the fact it’s June means even more. Despite this, however, it’s still insane to see that there are five sequels (six if you consider June 16th’s All Eyez on Me as a continuation of Straight Outta Compton like the trades wanted us to believe when it was green-lit). That’s one a week to ensure talk of creative bankruptcy in Hollywood never evaporates. Then again, it doesn’t deserve to in...

In 1998’s crime/comedy flick, “Very Bad Things,” a prostitute accidentally gets killed during a bachelor party. Fast-forward nearly two decades and the premise has been flipped for the upcoming “Rough Night,” which leans more raunchy than black comedy in its take on the setup.

Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer and Kate McKinnon star in the movie about five gal pals who go wild in Miami during a bachelorette party, only for a male stripper to wind up dead in their hands.

Continue reading New ‘Rough Night’ Trailer Is Filled With Raunchy Hijinks For Scarlett Johansson, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon & More at The Playlist.

Although it underwent another title change, the Scarlett Johansson-led raunchy lady comedy we’ve heard so much about—mostly in relation to its title—finally has a red band trailer. Rough Night née Rock That Body née Move That Body tells the story of a bachelorette party gone wrong. An engaged woman (Johansson) sets off to Miami with her friends—played by Jillian Bell, Ilana Glazer, Kate McKinnon, and Zoe Kravitz—to do some bonding... and coke. Things really take a turn for the worst when they kill the stripper.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because you’ve probably seen Very Bad Things. But maybe that‘s just a matter of marketing. Broad City’s Lucia Aniello directed the film, and co-wrote the script with Paul W. Downs, so we’re pretty sure the film’s got more up its sleeve than a distaff version of a Christian Slater...

Female-driven hard R comedies are definitely becoming a welcome trend in Hollywood. While the industry has definitely taken a shift to creating somewhat lazy female remakes of existing male-driven properties, some studios have to taken the right approach in giving these actresses films of their owns in which to shine. So far, two solid comedies of that nature come to mind: Bridesmaids, and Bad Moms.

This next film in that similar vein comes in the form of Rough Night, which stars Scarlett Johansson, Zoë Kravitz, Kate McKinnon, Jillian Bell, and Ilana Glazer. The premise is a solid one, albeit quite familiar:

“In the film, five friends from college, Jess, Pippa, Alice, Frankie and Blair, reunite when they rent a beach house in Miami for a wild bachelorette weekend that goes completely off the rails when a male stripper turns up dead.”

Take a look at the trailer below:

Rough Night...

[Editor’s Note: This post is presented in partnership with Spectrum. Catch up on this year’s Awards Season contenders and the latest films On Demand. Today’s pick is “Desierto.”]

Like Sandra Bullock’s character in “Gravity,” writer-director Alfonso Cuaron is resilient, never one to back down to a challenge that others may deem impossible.

Following his beloved apocalyptic thriller “Children of Men,” Cuaron decided that for his next project, he wanted to go to space. The problem was, to get him there new technology would have to be invented. Instead of throwing in the towel, Cuaron and his team worked tirelessly for four-and-a-half years to make Cuaron’s dreams a reality.

The result has been hailed by critics as the best space-set film since Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey,” and is now up for a whopping 10 Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director. Just this weekend he won the Directors Guild of America’s prestigious Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Feature Film prize.

“Alfonso is relentless in the pursuit of his vision,” “Gravity” producer David Heyman told Indiewire.

[Editor’s Note: This post is presented in partnership with Spectrum. Catch up on this year’s Awards Season contenders and the latest films On Demand. Today’s pick is “Christine.”]

Acting is all about respect: to the material, to collaborators and, most importantly, to the character. One of last year’s best examples was Rebecca Hall’s portrayal of Christine Chubbuck, a Florida newscaster whose on-air death in 1974 became part of an ever-evolving television mythology. Chubbuck’s is a delicate story, one that could easily have become an exploitative caricature of a “troubled woman.”

But in Antonio Campos’ “Christine,” Hall enriches her version of Chubbuck with that respect, keeping this on-screen version from being a flat cipher for the problems in our modern news media or for those dealing with mental health issues. With 43 years of distance, “Christine” lets Hall show a fuller view of Chubbuck’s life.

In playing the full series of events that led to her fateful decision, Hall gets the opportunity to show other sides of Chubbuck that those only familiar with her final few minutes might not understand.

Three feature films and a commercial are seeking actors and models for their upcoming shoot dates! Check out the opportunities below! “The Engagement”Six leading roles and one supporting actor are needed for this feature film about “a group of friends, a pending wedding proposal, and a haunted past.” Talent will be cast out of New York City for the project set to film in the Big Apple, in Montana, and in Georgia, through October and November. Pay is yet to be determined. Meals and transportation will be provided. “The Farm”The description for this feature film sounds a little like an episode of “The Twilight Zone.” Background extras are being cast for this “old school horror” story about a couple who check into a lodge and never get to leave. Extras will be paid $50 per day and will be on location in Banning and Los Angeles, California. “Burn It All Down”Birmingham,...

On the docket for today are auditions for Netflix’s award-winning “House of Cards,” as well as two feature films and a fan film based in the Marvel world of Doctor Doom. Find your next gig here! “House Of Cards”Speaking, supporting roles for several congressmen plus unnamed characters (including an FBI agent, a sniper, a reporter, and a TV moderator) are being cast out of Baltimore, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., for this Netflix hit starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Shooting on this Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning drama begins July 11 and offers professional pay. Check out the casting notice for all the breakdowns! “Burn It All Down”“Think ‘Thelma and Louise’ meets ‘The Hangover’ meets ‘Very Bad Things,’ ” reads the description for this darkly funny and action-packed rom-com from Debtor Entertainment. Two leads and several supporting actors are being cast nationwide for this Birmingham, Alabama, feature film...

Two couples got their swerve on in this week’s Nashville. One was a foregone conclusion. The other was an abomination.

Yeah, you heard me, Layla. Abomination! I could maybe get behind your plan to seduce Juliette’s ex-husband if you… had an actual plan to seduce Juliette’s husband. But your to-do list seems like an endless loop of mope, sulk, stalk off and then glom onto Avery’s lips whenever they’re within smooching distance. Even worse: This trajectory seems to be working for you.

RelatedNashville‘s Jonathan Jackson on Avery Reuniting With Juliette (He ‘Deeply Loves Her...

Scarlett Johansson is currently in talks to star in Move That Body for Sony Pictures, and while that title sounds as though the actress is considering branching out into exercise DVDs, it is, in fact, a comedy script from the writing duo behind the successful TV show, Broad City. Lucia Aniello and Paul W. Downs wrote the screenplay, which became the subject of a studio bidding war in June 2015. Sony was victorious, and their investment in the property was recently justified when Move That Body won a spot on the Black List 2015 selections.

The film is characterized as “The Hangover meets Weekend At Bernie’s,” but the script logline actually harks back to a different male-led, darkly comic movie.

“Five friends rent a beach house in Miami for a batchelorette weekend, and accidentally kill a male stripper.”

This premise bears a striking resemblance to the 1998 Peter Berg film Very Bad Things...

“Criminal Activities” is yet another one of those “Clueless regular folks who get into deep criminal shit struggle to come out of the situation alive” dark comedies that were very popular during the post-Tarantino late '90s. Examples like “Suicide Kings” and “Very Bad Things” are just two titles that come to mind after a maximum of five seconds of brainstorming. Right down to its generic title, “Criminal Activities” doesn’t add anything new to the formula, and you can probably predict every single one of its story beats, including the wholly unnecessary twist ending, but I had fun with it nevertheless. This gruesome dark comedy is the feature directorial debut of Jackie Earl Haley, veteran portrayer of some of the creepiest characters from Hollywood’s last decade. Robert Lowell, the American poet who died in 1977, wrote the screenplay decades ago, and Haley updated it and changed the location from Detroit to Cleveland,...

Recently, Soapcentral released some new teaser spoilers for the upcoming "Days Of Our Lives" week of August 31st, 2015, and it turns out that we're going to see some very interesting and high drama stuff take place as bad news sends one guy into a state of disarray. Very bad things start to go wrong for someone with good intentions, and more! The new week of August 31st teaser spoilers, read like this: Things are going to go horribly wrong for one young Salemite who had good intentions. A proposal will send one Salemite into exploring matters of the heart. One Salemite won't exactly know what to do with himself upon hearing tragic news. A wayward Salemite will detail his adventures but will also look to rebuild bridges. It all begins on Monday afternoon, August 31st at 12pm central time on NBC.

In a world where witches live among us, an immortal warrior, the last of his kind, fights to keep the world safe in the new trailer for The Last Witch Hunter. After slaying the all-powerful Queen Witch, Kaulder is cursed to live forever, so he can watch his loved ones die and never see them again […]

Read Vin Diesel is Preparing for Some Very Bad Things in The Last Witch Hunter on Filmonic.

Scott Foley has been a silver screen star for some time, kicking off with a long run on Felicity before turns across all genres in Scrubs, The Unit, True Blood, and, most recently and recognizably, on Scandal. With the cache to pull some clout to his feature directorial debut, he does quadruple duty as writer, producer, director, and star of Let’s Kill Ward’s Wife. A black comedy that still manages to keep the tone light, even as a body is being chopped to pieces, the flick joins a perverse pantheon of ensemble humor with moderately well known casts that may have hit its high-water mark with 1998’s Very Bad Things. That crass little outing saw Jon Favreau, Christian Slater, Jeremy Piven, and Daniel Stern trying to dispose of a dead prostitute after a bachelor party in Vegas goes south.

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A few nights ago, Warner Bros. hosted a very canny event that our own Louis Virtel attended at the Playboy Mansion, a screening of "Entourage" that may have felt like virtual reality for those who attended. While I doubt being surrounded by scantily clad bunnies influenced Louis one way or another on the film, it's likely you'll see a number of reviews that are perhaps more enthusiastic than they would otherwise be, and it'd be hard to blame anyone who fell for it. One of the reasons the setting seemed so right for that particular film is because much of the charge of "Entourage" is watching the core ensemble swagger their way through Hollywood, doing whatever they want and rarely if ever facing any consequences as a result. It's always presented with a wink and a smile, just a case of boys being boys. We live in a world right...

When Pulp Fiction opened in theaters 20 years ago today, the mainstream moviegoing audience was introduced to a dynamic new Hollywood talent. Quentin Tarantino was a 31-year-old hipster whose formal film education never rose much higher than working as a clerk in a Manhattan Beach video store. A walking encyclopedia of film history who fetishized some of the more obscure genres, Tarantino had a gift for dialog and his own visual toolbox that expanded the language of cinematic storytelling. Pulp Fiction was the culmination of a two-year stretch where the director went from Nobody to Wunderkind, beginning with the Sundance premiere...