Director Andrew Heckler Talks About the Burden of Movie-Making
I Still Believe isn’t the only faith-tinged movie playing in much-depleted (and rapidly shuttering) theaters right now. Another film, featuring Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker and the talented Garrett Hedlund, was released Feb. 28 and contains deep themes of sin and salvation, judgment and mercy. It even comes with an old-fashioned baptism. The catch: The movie, […]
Onward Wins, Box Office Loses
The winner this weekend? The coronavirus. It was inevitable, really. With Hollywood pushing off new releases and many cities and states restricting large gatherings, the box office was going to be a COVID-19 casualty whether anyone else got sick or not. And indeed, the average city multiplex was so deserted you’d be liable to see […]
What to Watch With Your Family While You’re at Home
Paramount has silenced A Quiet Place II for the time being—pushing its March 20 release date to sometime in the indeterminate future. The latest chapter in the Fast & Furious franchise, F9, has been pushed to next April. No Time to Die, the newest chapter in the James Bond Franchise, was shaken all the way […]
Onward Conjures Up First-Place Finish
No quest worth its salt is ever easy. Just ask the folks behind Onward. Pixar’s latest flick had to dodge controversy, leap competitors and wrestle the pesky panic over the coronavirus in order to reach the hallowed box-office mountaintop. But reach it Onward did—planting its tattered flag to flap over every other movie in the […]
Culture Clips: The Newest Bond Villain is the Coronavirus
James Bond has tussled with some pretty terrible, ruthless nemeses in his ludicrously long career. He’s battled men with golden guns, steel jaws and razor-sharp hat brims, and he’s always managed to come back to jolly old England with his mission complete. But now, it seems MI6 has come up against an adversary even too […]
Invisible Man Materializes at No. 1
You can’t actually see the Invisible Man, pretty much by definition. Which makes this weekend’s box-office champ a bit of a paradox. Lots of people did see The Invisible Man (the movie, that is): about $29 million worth of people, in fact. That made It the weekend’s no-doubt No. 1 flick—the first horror film of […]
Culture Clips: The Mouse House Gets a New Big Cheese
Most of us are familiar with Luke Skywalker, Tony Stark, Mickey Mouse and Homer Simpson. We might not know the guy who was instrumental in bringing them all together in one big Disney family: Bob Iger. Iger, who’d been Disney’s CEO since 2005, announced yesterday that he was stepping down—clearing the way for Bob Chapek […]
More Screen Time, Less Sleep Time?
You wouldn’t think that a biography of 19th president Rutherford B. Hayes would keep one up at night. In truth, it was one of the reasons I was reading said biography. Can’t sleep? Rutherford B. Hayes’ mixed record on reconstruction will knock you right out. But there I was, still reading—an hour after I’d intended […]
Sonic Rings Up Another Win
This weekend’s box-office tourney featured a showdown between PG-rated films, pitting defending champ Sonic the Hedgehog against new contender Call of the Wild. And if we were in the world of the old Highlander series of movies, someone would start chanting right now that “there can be only one!” But when the CGI dust settled, […]
Culture Clips: Social Media Can Cause Depression … but One Outlet Wants to Combat It, Too
We’ve been reporting for a while that social media can bum you out. A new study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal bears that out. The study focused specifically on teens, and it found that teen girls that use social media more than two hours a day have higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts. […]