BE REEL

(Source: Variety )  Orion and the Dark  (2024)  Although DreamWorks has made several TV series for Netflix, they (for now) have only made one feature film for the streaming service. UK author Emma Yarlett’s children’s book, Orion and the Dark , was adapted by screenwriter Charlie Kaufman (his first turn in animation since the stop-motion adult drama  Anomalisa ), while first-time director Sean Charmatz presents a colorful, bright, and surprisingly deep, surreal fantasy .  The main story centers on the titular Orion (voiced by Jacob Tremblay), who seems to be afraid of everything. Talking to girls. Being rejected. Being bullied by classmates. Dying. But mostly, he (like most kids) is afraid of the dark. He tells us so through quirky voiceover narration. One night, Dark personified (voiced by Paul Walter Hauser) actually shows up and decides to show Orion his job for one night, to try to convince the boy that what he’s afraid of isn’t actually so bad.  Recall...

(Source: Logopedia )     Iron Man (2008)  Last year, when revisiting each existing film and documentary I could/did on The Fantastic Four , I commented on how different studios had owned the previous rights to certain characters from Marvel Comics, including (but not limited to) the X-Men at 20th Century Fox and Spider-Man at Sony. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s (during which time Christopher Nolan revitalized the Batman saga) that Marvel decided to produce and finance their first movie independently—with distribution from Paramount Pictures—under the banner of “ Marvel Studios .” Led by producers Avi Arad and Kevin Feige, their choice of character and story came from an obscure series that most of the general public wasn’t familiar with, but most diehard comic book fans were : a tech billionaire who leads a double life as a hero in a mechanized suit of armor.  Not since Johnny Depp was initially cast as Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean has a major studio ...

(Source: IMDb )  The yellow, pill-shaped henchmen of supervillain-turned-super-spy dad Gru from Illumination’s ever-popular Despicable Me series have arguably become more iconic than their costars from that same series. So much so, that they’ve not only been the mascots of Chris Meladandri’s CGI company (based in France). They’ve had three standalone movies up to this point. Their solo debut in 2015 traced their origins from the dawn of time to the 1960s, while their 2022 follow-up chronicled their early days with a much-younger Gru, when the latter wanted to be part of a league of supervillains.  With this year’s Minions & Monsters , the setting takes place in 1920s Hollywood, as the little guys not only keep looking for a dastardly master to serve (a carry-over from their first flick), but also (quite accidentally) break out into the film industry, including the transition between silent pictures and talkies, and black-and-white to color. It sort of retcons their backsto...

(Source: IMDb ) The current slate of DC Studios movies continues with what is officially their second theatrical release. Following a brief cameo in last summer's entertaining Superman , Clark Kent's cousin Kara Zor-El gets her own standalone entry. The main differences in Supergirl  (courtesy director Craig Gillespie and writer Ana Nogueira) are a rougher, more desolate aesthetic and a subversive character portrayal than seen with previous actresses Helen Slater, Melissa Benoit, and Sasha Calle, respectively.  House of the Dragon actress Milly Alcock dons the cap/trench coat and sunglasses as Kara, a young woman still traumatized by the destruction of her home planet and her people—save for her lone dog, Krypto. As something of an anti-heroic take on the character, Kara is a young woman who has become disillusioned and hopeless, would rather drink her problems away, and who has no issue knocking her opponents into oblivion. Her cousin Clark (David Corenswet, once again) keep...