For his next project, George Clooney is directing and co-starring in an adaptation of Lily Brooks-Dalton’s novel Good Morning, Midnight. Re-titled The Midnight Sky, the first trailer has arrived and the dystopian science fiction film looks like a mix of previous direct-to-Netflix projects The Cloverfield Paradox and IO, both mid-level sci-fi you probably wouldn’t want to pay to see in the theater. Are audiences ready for another dreary take on Earth’s future?
When the Rat Pack (you know, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop) first made the heist comedy Ocean’s 11 about a group of WWII pals in Las Vegas, do you think they had any idea they were establishing a brand that would be continuing with a new film 58 years later? In the latest entry, Ocean’s 8, Warner Bros. has Frank’s daughter Nancy serenade us in the first trailer, which features a nicely cast crowd of actors. In case you haven’t been keeping count, this will be the fifth film featuring an Ocean family member leading a group on a major con. Sinatra was the original Danny Ocean, and in the reboot Ocean’s Eleven, Ocean’s Twelve, and Ocean’s Thirteen, George Clooney took over the role and led a cast including Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Julia Roberts.
Next year we’ll see Sandra Bullock lead the way as Debbie Ocean, fresh out of jail and enlisting a group of varying skill sets to steel valuable jewels at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her co-stars include Cate Blanchett, Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter, Richard Armitage, Olivia Munn, Rihanna, Katie Holmes, Mindy Kaling, and Dakota Fanning.
Check out Warner Bros.’ first trailer for Ocean’s 8:
Our annual “All the Movies You’ll Want to See…” series has been one of the most viewed of all of our entries at borg.com each year. So this year we again scoured Hollywood and its publicity machine for as many genre films coming out in 2016 as have been disclosed. Usually we select the 24 that look like the biggest hits, but we’re going all out for 2016. The result is a whopping 48 movies, many you’ll probably want to see in the theater or catch on video. We bet you’ll find a bunch below you’ve never heard of. Bookmark this now for your 2016 calendar!
Most coming out in the second half of 2016 don’t even have posters released yet, but many do. We’ve included descriptions and key cast so you can start planning accordingly.
What do we think will be the biggest hits of the year? How about Star Wars: Rogue One? Or Star Trek Beyond? You’ve heard endlessly about Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, but 2016 will also see Doctor Strange, Captain America: Civil War, and X-Men: Apocalypse. There’s even a handful of Westerns, with The Hateful 8, Jane Got a Gun, and another remake of The Magnificent Seven heading our way.
The Hateful Eight – January 1
Tarentino’s Western! Ennio Morricone score! Kurt Russell, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Channing Tatum!
The 5th Wave – January 8
Chloe Grace Moretz and Liev Schreiber in an alien invasion.
400 Days – January 12
The CW’s Brandon Routh, Caity Lotz, and Tom Cavanaugh in a movie about astronauts that seems to be a play on Ender’s Game.
Review by C.J. Bunce
There is plenty to like about The Incredibles’ director Brad Bird’s 2015 release, Tomorrowland, now available on Blu-ray, DVD, and digital media. Tomorrowland has a great, positive message about the potential of thinkers and dreamers, and it showcases a beautiful future world, but somehow it just doesn’t dazzle like it could. Still, enough positive vibes and ideas are steeped into this film that the right person watching this movie will find it to be inspirational.
One of the best features is a decommissioned robot named Athena (that we’d label an excellent borg except we’re not sure biological elements or living matter may be part of her) played by young actress Raffey Cassidy (Cassidy played the daughter Beatrice in Season One of Mr. Selfridge). In every scene she is so perfect in her role that her diction and appearance might convince you she will be shown later as an adult played by Emily Blunt (that doesn’t happen, but she’s a dead ringer).
Sadly Tomorrowland struggles with what kind of movie it wants to be. Is this a fantasy or science fiction movie, or both? Visually the Tomorrowland parallel world scenes feel much like the mix of sci-fi and fantasy from classic Flash Gordon–a great component of the movie watching experience. But you must watch more than two-thirds of the film before being able to grasp a clear plot, and get fully immersed in that other world. To get where the story is trying to get plenty of world building is apparently required. It’s unfortunate because Tomorrowland couldn’t address a more interesting subject: Why didn’t the future we envisioned 60 years ago come to pass? (Where are our jet packs?!)
It’s a question science fiction writers wrestle with all the time: If I am going to predict a future technology or development, how many years from now should I say it will be achieved? And will it come about at all at any time? If you peg the breakthrough in your own lifetime, you may be left to face criticism when that date finally arrives. See Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, James Cameron’s Terminator series, all of those Philip K. Dick novel adaptations, and more recently, Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future II predictions–many got elements of the future right, but many didn’t.
We’ve already seen two previews for Disney’s Tomorrowland, starring George Clooney and Hugh Laurie. The first, previewed here at borg.com, made the film look intriguing but wasn’t enough alone to get us to the theater. The second, previewed here, gave us a bit more to go on. But the latest trailer, released this past week, is enough for us to line up tickets for the opening weekend right away.
In fact, if you want to see an example of just what to put in a trailer, this third trailer released would be a good guide. It’s got some key features that make for great entertainment:
After the break, check out this nifty new trailer for Tomorrowland:
Last month’s teaser trailer for Disney’s Tomorrowland, starring George Clooney, didn’t give us much to go on. If you missed it, check it out here. It seemed like another gimmick to get people into a theme park. Then they released the new full-length trailer for the summer 2015 release.
And they had us at Hugh Laurie.
How did we miss that Hugh Laurie was going to be in this, as some apparent high-level ruler of the futuristic Tomorrowland, accessible by a small push-button pin?
It appears like it could have some good sci-fi/fantasy elements: An unexpected package like Ben Affleck found in Paycheck. Or a useful totem like those found in the great short-lived sci-fi series, The Lost Room.
After the break, check out the new trailer for Tomorrowland:
Sure it was brief but even more interesting than the movie trailers at the big game today (except for Terminator Genisys, previewed at borg.com here earlier) is the teaser for Heroes Reborn. Not only do we get Jack Coleman, the horned-rimmed glasses man, back, but our first look at Zachary Levi on an NBC series since the end of season five of Chuck:
Heroes Reborn does not yet have a release date.
The latest of the trailers for Jurassic World finally makes the movie look pretty good. Earlier trailers seemed a bit thin, but the prospect of Chris Pratt as a circus lion tamer for raptors seems like a great idea:
We’ve just wound down another year of big movies–from Captain America: The Winter Soldier to X-Men: Days of Future Past to Guardians of the Galaxy to The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. So what’s on the radar at borg.com for 2015? We think you’ll want to see several of these big sci-fi, fantasy, superhero, and action flicks coming to a screen near you next year.
Vice – Jan. 16 – The next in a long line of Bruce Willis action flicks. This time it’s a sci-fi story about a future resort where humans freely pursue their vices–with artificial humans.
Wild Card – Jan. 30 – A story based on a novel by Academy Award winning writer William Goldman, starring Jason Statham as a gambler.
Kingsman: The Secret Service – Feb. 13 – This Colin Firth as spy action flick will tell us once and for all whether Firth would be a good choice to play James Bond. With an all-star cast including Mark Hamill, Michael Caine, Mark Strong, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Chappie – March 6 – Neill Blomkamp’s latest science fiction entry. A Pinocchio story where a robot learns to live among humans.
Review by C.J. Bunce
It could have been a more serious film for fans of Ocean’s Eleven. It could have been The Dirty Dozen. Unfortunately, writer/director George Clooney missed plenty of opportunities to place The Monuments Men alongside the shelves of great World War II movies of years past. With a cast including Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman, Bob Balaban, and Matt Damon (along with Clooney) this should have been an easy victory. So where’s the miss? Clooney couldn’t decide which movie he wanted to make: a World War II biopic or a comedy. The blend of both results in a merely watchable film, but comes in below the cast’s past works.
If you’ve seen any documentaries on the actual events that inspired the film, you already understand the guiding principle of the story: It is absolutely worth fighting and dying for to preserve those artifacts that define your culture. The Monuments Men is the story of a handful of art experts turned soldiers at the end of WWII who tried to assemble and return to their owners–repatriate–prized works of art, some religious, some by renowned art masters, some paintings, some sculptures, and other cultural artifacts, despite the Nazi efforts to squirrel away and often destroy vast cashes of these looted spoils of war.
The best element of the real-life story is not about any particular Monument’s man, but the actual account of Rose Valland, a French art scholar who covertly kept a log book of where the Nazis in France shipped stolen art. She allowed The Monuments Men to fulfill their mission of returning so much art to rightful owners after war’s end. Like the Valland-inspired Claire Simone, played by Cate Blanchett in the movie, Valland worked in the Jeu De Paume museum in Paris during the Nazi occupation, which was used as the German base of operations for hoarding Europe’s art treasures. Unknown to the Nazis, Valland spoke German, and used this to chronicle the details of the Nazi’s operation. Unfortunately, Valland’s story becomes only a secondary plot to the men of The Monuments Men, and her account is never as exciting as the real-life Valland. In fact, the foreign language intrigue of Valland’s story is completely ignored in the film.
