Author: Torsten Reitz

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One Room Country Shack: Quentin Tarantino Unleashes The Hateful Eight

Some movies come with a colorful history, meaning that their road to the big screen has been rather unusual. One of those is Quentin Tarantino‘s The Hateful Eight. Originally designed as a follow-up to the successful Django Unchained, the director temporarily scrapped the whole project because a first draft of the screenplay had been leaked on the internet and, as a consequence, planned to turn it into a novel. Eventually, however, Tarantino revisited the movie idea after a live reading of the script and assembled a mighty fine cast for it. Now that The Hateful Eight has seen its theatrical run and already made it through the recent awards season, how does it fare in comparison with the remaining works of the cult director?

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Double Agents: Guy Ritchie Reveals The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Henry Cavill. Credits: Gage Skidmore. CC License.

Pop culture has always been captivated by the Cold War. Back in the day, its backdrop spawned the longest-tenured blockbuster movie franchise ever, the James Bond series. This fascination with spies from the East-West conflict has never ceased, particularly so with Hollywood reenacting television shows and feature films from that era. The latest example is The Man From U.N.C.L.E., once co-creator for the small screen by 007 inventor Ian Fleming and interestingly as well as daringly pitting a U.S. and a Soviet agent on the same side to fight against a multinational terror syndicate. Can director Guy Ritchie’s modern cinematic take on the beloved series bring U.N.C.L.E. back to life?

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Attack of the Nerds: Fanboys Makes a Joyride out of Looking Forward to Star Wars

Jay Baruchel.
Credits: Gage Skidmore. CC License.

Remember when, back in 1999, the Star Wars hype was almost as huge, if not even bigger, than this year? After an absence of more than a decade and a half, the saga was about to return with Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and expectations were through the roof. Fanboys, a 2009 comedy by director Kyle Newman, feeds to the frenzy of that time. As the title suggests, you might be in for a wild ride if you belong to the eponymous group. Does the film satisfy in that regard, however, and – on top of that – is it also a movie that’s fun to watch for non-Fanboys?

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A New Chapter: J.J. Abrams Introduces the Next Generation to Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Harrison Ford.
Credits: Gage Skidmore. CC License.

‘Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away…’ Every part of the Star Wars franchise begins with that fairy tale opening and John Williams’s trademark fanfare, and each time, the diehard fans have been passionate about it. A decade after George Lucas’s final film in the series, the latest installment, Episode VII: The Force Awakens, has smashed all previous box-office records with J.J. Abrams, Hollywood’s current favorite wunderkind to be handed over the reins for classic franchises, at the controls for the first time.

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Ghost in the Machine: Daniel Craig’s James Bond Hunts Sam Mendes’s Spectre

James Bond (Daniel Craig) pursues almost invisible enemies.
James Bond (Daniel Craig) pursues almost invisible enemies.

‘James Bond will return…’ Barring a short period in the early 1990s, when the future of the series was up in the air thanks to legal issues, this statement has been as sure as death and taxes for more than five solid decades. Three years after the gargantuan success of Skyfall, the British super spy graces the silver screen of the blue planet with his presence once more. In the midst of some controversy about whether he still enjoys the role, Daniel Craig returns for his fourth outing as 007. Can Spectre, which is again directed by Oscar winner Sam Mendes, ‘deliver the goods’ in the face of enormous expectations?

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In the Cards: Christian Bale is Terrence Malick’s Knight Of Cups

Rick (Christian Bale, right) with his ex-wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett, left)
Rick (Christian Bale, right) with his ex-wife Nancy (Cate Blanchett, left)

Terrence Malick remains an enigma. First, the reclusive director vanished from the filmmaking landscape for two solid decades between his sophomore effort Days Of Heaven and the acclaimed The Thin Red Line. Then, he returns with a new movie every other year from 2011’s The Tree Of Life on, after never having spent less than five on every other previous feature. Knight Of Cups, which reunites him with erstwhile Batman Christian Bale, is the third of these experimental narratives that Terrence Malick has put out in a relatively short span of time. Given the frenetic working pace, can the director continue his run as the film buffs’ darling or has he finally run out of steam with his latest output?

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Cheap Sunglasses: Roddy Piper Fights the Aliens in John Carpenter’s They Live

John Nada (Roddy Piper) has finally seen the truth behind the lies.
John Nada (Roddy Piper) has finally seen the truth behind the lies.

‘Rowdy’ Roddy Piper was arguably one of wrestling’s first true major superstars in the late 1980s. When the Canadian fought Hulk Hogan at the then-WWF’s initial Wrestlemania, his popularity almost rivaled that of the blond, mustache-wearing ‘Hulkster.’ These two men were also pioneers in terms of turning their fame in the ring into carving out a niche for themselves in Hollywood. Hulk Hogan managed to land a part in Rocky III and later got his own television series, Thunder In Paradise. Roddy Piper unfortunately died of a heart attack at age 61 last month. Therefore it’s time to pay tribute to and remember him with arguably his greatest role – that of the leading man in John Carpenter’s They Live.

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Broadway The Hard Way: Alejandro González Iñárritu’s Birdman, or the Psyche of an Actor

Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton, front) is always haunted by Birdman.
Riggan Thompson (Michael Keaton, front) is always haunted by Birdman.

Mexican filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu had already been a known commodity in Hollywood circles for a while. His debut feature, Amores Perros, became a fan favorite, while his U.S. projects 21 Grams, Babel, and Biutiful landed him the star power of Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett, Sean Penn, or Javier Bardem. With his fifth movie, Birdman: Or (The Unexpected Virtue Of Ignorance), he has firmly established himself as one of the premier talents behind the camera stateside. The film won four prestigious Academy Awards for Best Motion Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography – but how good is Birdman really?

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The Monster Is Loose: Andrei Zvyagintsev’s Leviathan as a Parable of Putin’s Russia?

A broken Kolya (Aleksei Serebryanov) reflects on his life.
A broken Kolya (Aleksei Serebryanov) reflects on his life.

Russian cinema has always commanded international respect, even when things were frosty between the Soviet Union and the ‘West.’ The same still holds true for the modern arthouse movies from the country. Since the early 2000s, Andrei Zvyagintsev has become one of the more distinguished Russian directors. Particularly because of the recent crisis between his homeland, Ukraine, and the NATO, Zvyagintsev’s fourth feature, Leviathan, has seen a lot of politically-motivated controversy coming its way. The question is, then, how good is the movie and how much of an accurate portrait of today’s Russia does it provide?

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Tyranny of Souls: James Franco and Seth Rogen Conduct The Interview

CIA Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan, center) briefs television star Dave Skylark (James Franco, left) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen, right).
CIA Agent Lacey (Lizzy Caplan, center) briefs television star Dave Skylark (James Franco, left) and his producer Aaron Rapaport (Seth Rogen, right).

Despite the fact that most comedies involving Seth Rogen have generally been subject to debate, none of them has stirred as big a controversy as The Interview. A political comedy about real-life North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the film has been threatened by the Pyongyang regime for months, leading to Sony Pictures becoming the victim of the ‘Guardians of Peace’ hacker group and causing the studio to pull the movie from the theaters. That we are now able to watch The Interview anyway is owed to Sony doing a U-turn and releasing the comedy online instead.

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Agent Provocateur: Edward Snowden Explains the Digital World as Citizenfour

Edward Snowden (left) explains Glenn Greenwald (right) how it's done.
Edward Snowden (left) explains Glenn Greenwald (right) how it’s done.

Who is Edward Snowden? Why even bother posing the question, you may ask, as the answer seems to be blatantly obvious: a world-famous whistleblower. The person who first appeared under the alias of Citizenfour to reveal the truth about the NSA, PRISM, and TEMPORA in 2013. We all know his name and face now, but we don’t really know the man and his motivations at all, at least not from a firsthand account. Is he a hero, as part of the internet community portrays him to be, or a villain, as most of the Western (and particularly) American officials paint him?

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