BE REEL

(Courtesy IMDb )  It’s been years since I’ve studied and/or invested myself in the works of renowned and enduring playwright William Shakespeare. But as of recently, I may have something of a newfound appreciation for the man and what he was known for, thanks to director Chloé Zhao. Returning to the director's chair for the first time in four years, the Nomadland filmmaker (along with co-producers Steven Spielberg and Sam Mendes) presents a bittersweet, emotionally-heavy, and beautiful adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell's novel about the inspiration behind Shakespeare's play, Hamlet . More specifically, Hamnet focuses less on the man himself and more on his wife Agnes and their three children. So if you’re looking for a conventional biopic on Shakespeare himself, you won’t find it here. (But don’t let that steer you clear.)  The first trailer for this new release (screened in advance at this year’s Twin Cities Film Festival , and out nationwide this December) amazed me and h...

(Courtesy IMDb )   When certain famous people have done certain things for so long, it’s easy to pigeonhole them and think that they can’t do anything beyond those things. In the case of, say, Robert Pattinson, it’s his role as Edward Cullen in the Twilight series. For Adam Sandler, it’s making people laugh through his many silly comedies. Then there’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who has gone from pro-fighting in the World Wrestling Federation to headlining some of the biggest action tentpoles of recent years. Even Johnson didn’t believe he could do more than be a seemingly invincible, macho screen hero. He has also stated that he’s now at a point in his career (at age 53) to take on more raw human stories.   Enter filmmaker Benny Safdie, who (along with brother Josh Safdie) helped redefine the careers of Pattinson and Sandler with Good Time and Uncut Gems , respectively. And now, in Benny’s first solo directorial outing (Josh will have his own in December, with the release of...

(Courtesy Amazon )  Tron: Ares (2025)  Talk of a third entry in the TRON film series had been circling since the release of the second installment back in 2010. But nothing official was greenlit over the years, and the closest thing that fans ever got to a follow-up was an animated TV series on Disney XD, titled Tron: Uprising , and some video game spinoffs. (For the former, Bruce Boxleitner reprised his role as the titular computer program, as did Olivia Wilde as Quorra from Tron: Legacy .) Fast forward to 2025, and it was official that Norwegian filmmaker Joachim Rønning would be helming a third theatrical release with actor-musician Jared Leto in the title role.  Tron: Ares may be the first standalone entry in the franchise, despite several nostalgic throwbacks and references to the previous films (particularly the landmark 1982 flick that started it all). It’s also the first to receive a PG-13 rating, mainly for its intense action and violence. Leto plays a super-so...

(Courtesy movieposters ) Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson has made one of his most ambitious and brilliant projects to date, with a highly-anticipated genre-bender that combines political thriller with dark satire, as well as alarming cultural relevancy and grounded-if-heightened comedy. It’s really no surprise that  One Battle After Another (2025) has already been getting rave reviews and early awards buzz.  The main plot follows a washed-up ex-revolutionary—once part of a group of extremists, known for freeing immigrants and causing all sorts of explosive mayhem—who comes out of hiding in search of his missing teenage daughter. This was a deeply personal project for Anderson, who had reportedly been working on it for almost two decades, originally to adapt Thomas Pynchon’s novel Vineland . For one reason or another, Anderson couldn’t crack the story until he decided to loosely based his screenplay off of elements from Pynchon’s book that stood out to him. (He had previo...

(Courtesy IMDb )   The Long Walk (2025)  Author Stephen King has been having a banner year in cinema this year, as four of his works have been adapted into theatrical features. These include Osgood Perkins’ The Monkey and Mike Flanagan’s The Life of Chuck , while Edgar Wright’s remake of The Running Man releases next month. For this stretch, Hunger Games  helmer Francis Lawrence directs JT Mollier’s screenplay based on King’s story, The Long Walk (one of the few projects written under the author’s pseudonym Richard Bachman).  The story follows a select group of young men (some of them teenagers) in a post-apocalyptic America, who are entered into a nationwide contest where they walk across country until only one is left standing and alive. A strong young cast (including Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, and Ben Wang, and screen veterans Judy Greer and a cold and sinister Mark Hamill), on one hand, makes this a very investing and engrossing character...

(Courtesy Amazon )   Tron: Legacy (2010)  Visual effects have certainly come a long way in the three decades that followed the release of Steven Lisberger’s groundbreaking and daring live-action feature about a computer world. It’s interesting that, one year after James Cameron’s game-changing blockbuster Avatar took a quantum leap in photorealistic CGI and risky filmmaking, a long-awaited sequel to Tron  also justified that leap into the quote-on-quote “digital frontier.”  Opening in the late-80s, game designer and computer company CEO Kevin Flynn goes missing, leaving his only son Sam without a father. Years later, when a now-20-something Sam (Garrett Hedlund) has become disillusioned with running his dad’s company, a signal comes from Flynn’s old and abandoned arcade. Echoing its predecessor, Sam gets zapped into the same world (known as the Grid) that his father disappeared into—now a much more expansive, complex, and dangerous universe—and must get to a portal...