Latest news with #SupermanIV:TheQuestforPeace
Newsweek
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Newsweek
Superman Battles Brutal Villain in New Teaser
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Entertainment gossip and news from Newsweek's network of contributors This Wednesday, we're supposed to be getting a new full trailer for "Superman", but in the meantime, James Gunn treated us to a little taste of what we should expect. The filmmaker released a 15-second preview of the trailer, featuring footage of a battle between Superman and a mechanized villain named the Hammer of Boravia. You can watch the teaser below. Read More: 'Superman' Releases New Look at Classic DC Superhero The Hammer of Boravia is an original villain, i.e., he has not appeared in the comics, though the fictional nation from which he hails is from the source material. In fact, Boravia first appeared all the way back in 1939's "Superman" #2. We've also seen Boravia in bits and pieces of the TV spots and teaser trailers released so far. David Corenswet in "Superman." David Corenswet in "Superman." Warner Bros This won't be the first time Superman has fought an original villain of this caliber on the big screen. In 1987's "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace", Christopher Reeve's Superman fought the Nuclear Man, a rival who would only show up in the comics much later. Of course, we all hope James Gunn's "Superman" does better than the flop that ended that film series. Superman certainly does seem to have his hands full in this film. So far, we've seen him fighting fire-breathing kaiju, a black clad villain who may or may not be Ultraman, and now the Hammer of Boravia. It's no wonder he's got Krypto and heroes like Metamorpho, Hawkgirl, Guy Gardner, and Mister Terrific watching his back. No matter what else you can say about "Superman", it certainly doesn't look like it's going to be lacking in the action department. The promotional lead-up to "Superman" is ramping up nicely ahead of tomorrow's trailer. Along with this new teaser, we've seen new posters for the film, including a motion poster, Krypto playing with Superman and Mister Terrific in a Milk Bone commercial, and even a new video ad in New York City's Times Square. With Marvel's "Thunderbolts*" now in the rear view mirror, expect the weeks leading up to July 11 to bring us all plenty of "Superman" advertisements, for better or worse. "Superman" releases in theaters on July 11. The film is written and directed by James Gunn. "Superman" stars David Corenswet, Rachel Brosnahan, Nicholas Hoult, Edi Gathegi, Anthony Carrigan, Nathan Fillion, and Isabela Merced. More Comics: Robert Downey Jr. Teases Doctor Doom In New Image 'Avengers: Doomsday' First Look Marks Production Milestone
Boston Globe
26-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Gene Hackman gets a much-deserved retrospective at the Coolidge
Superman, portrayed by Christopher Reeve, and Gene Hackman, right, are shown in a scene from "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace." AP Photo 'I think it's important to note that this series was programmed in the fall of 2024,' says Mark Anastasio, program director at the Coolidge. 'We really wanted to honor Mr. Hackman with a retrospective while he was still with us. This is now incredibly bittersweet.' Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Here's the lineup, along with my two cents about each film. Since I love a good double feature, I'm adding a second movie you can watch at home once you leave the theater. Advertisement 'The French Connection' Both of the films Ernest Tidyman co-wrote in 1971, 'Shaft' and 'The French Connection,' were huge hits, essentially saving their respective studios from bankruptcy. This film also cleaned up at the Academy Awards, winning five Oscars including best picture, director, adapted screenplay, and actor for Hackman; it was his third Oscar nomination in four years. The film's protagonist is Popeye Doyle, a corrupt and racist New York City detective who'll stop at nothing to get his man. Hackman's barroom scene inspired Eddie Murphy's parody in '48 Hrs.,' the scene that made the comedian a star. While I admit Hackman is fantastic, I've never been a fan of this movie. Besides the famous car chase (which director William Friedkin surpassed in his superior 1985 film, 'To Live and Die in L.A.'), I never understood why it's so revered. I guess you just had to be there. ( April 1, 7 p.m. ) Double feature: Watch Hackman expertly reprise Popeye Doyle in 1975's 'French Connection II.' (Available on Prime) Advertisement Gene Hackman in "The Conversation." The Boston Globe/Boston Globe 'The Conversation' If there's a role that encapsulates the essence of a Gene Hackman performance, it's surveillance expert Harry Caul in Francis Ford Coppola's terrifying masterpiece. And Hackman didn't even earn an Oscar nomination for it! The best of the batch of Watergate-era paranoid thrillers features a villainous Harrison Ford and Hackman's bespectacled antihero slowly succumbing to his obsessive desire to hear what he wants to hear. This movie will haunt you for days. Features the most sinister saxophone in cinema history. (April 6, 2 p.m.) Double feature: Tony Scott's Hackman-Will Smith paranoid thriller 'Enemy of the State' (1998) is a pseudo-sequel where Hackman's character may or may not be Harry Caul. (Available on Prime) Gene Hackman in "Hoosiers." Orion Pictures/Handout 'Hoosiers' Widely considered one of the best sports movies ever made, 'Hoosiers' showcases Hackman's softer side. Set at an Indiana high school in the 1950s, this film is an uplifting tale of second chances. Hackman plays the coach who inspires his team, and Oscar-nominee Dennis Hopper is the drunk he hires as his assistant coach. You will cheer. (April 8, 7 p.m., 35mm) Double feature: NFL coach Hackman + QB Keanu Reeves + sports comedy + misfit players = the enjoyable hot mess from 2000 called 'The Replacements.' (Available on AppleTV+) 'Night Moves' Who doesn't love a bleak-as-hell 1970s neo-noir? This is Hackman's 'Chinatown,' helmed by his 'Bonnie and Clyde' director Arthur Penn and featuring the debut of Melanie Griffith. Susan Clark ('Ma'am' to all you 'Webster' fans) plays Hackman's adulterous wife (a role originally offered to Faye Dunaway); Griffith is the missing teen who sets the plot in motion. An underseen, bitter little gem well worth experiencing in a theater. (April 13, 2 p.m., 35mm) Double feature: The only logical pairing is 1972's controversial, unflinchingly nasty Hackman-Lee Marvin mob movie 'Prime Cut.' Alas, it's not streaming anywhere, as far as I can tell. I substitute 1987's Kevin Costner thriller, 'No Way Out.' It's dumb as hell, and it has an infuriating ending, but Hackman's great in it. (Available on MGM+) Advertisement Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe play FBI agents investigating the disappearance of three civil rights workers in "Mississippi Burning." Orion Pictures 'Mississippi Burning' Hackman is excellent here (so is Frances McDormand), but I don't have enough space to express my utter hatred of this movie. It's a bright, shining lie that gives the FBI credit for civil rights advancements. Meanwhile, director Alan Parker reduces the Black people who actually fought these battles to cowering victims whose sole purpose is to be brutally murdered. The film was so controversial in its initial release that critics including Roger Ebert wrote articles defending their positive reviews. I just watched it again and still think it's repugnant, racist trash. Decide for yourself. (April 15, 7 p.m., 35mm) Double feature: 'Under Fire,' the 1983 movie about journalists in a war zone, where Hackman teams up with Nick Nolte and Joanna Cassidy in Nicaragua. (Available on Prime) Gene Hackman, winner of the best supporting actor award at the Academy Awards in March 1993. AP Photo, File 'Unforgiven' 'I don't deserve this … to die like this. I was building a house.' With those words, Hackman gives one of the all-time great line readings. (That entire scene is dynamite.) Clint Eastwood's revisionist western — his masterpiece — gifts Hackman with Little Bill Daggett, the vicious yet charming and funny sheriff who rules with an iron fist. Of his two Oscars, this is the one Hackman deserved without question. It's my favorite performance of his. (April 22, 7 p.m., 35mm) Double feature: Clint and Hackman reteam in 1997's conspiracy thriller 'Absolute Power.' Hackman plays the president! (Available on AppleTV+, Prime) Advertisement Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, and Calista Flockhart in "The Birdcage."'The Birdcage' Hackman rarely got to flex his impressive comedy muscles, but director Mike Nichols and screenwriter Elaine May turn him loose in this remake of 'La Cage Aux Folles.' It's a big ask to endure a homophobic, conservative senator character nowadays, but Hackman is no caricature. His scenes with Nathan Lane are hilarious examples of misplaced empathy. He also isn't a bad-looking drag queen. Kudos to Robin Williams, whose superb performance deserved more credit. ( April 27, 2p.m.) Double feature: Mel Brooks's 'Young Frankenstein.' Hackman's only in it for one scene, but it's the funniest one in the movie. (Just buy it!) 'The Royal Tenenbaums' Only Gene Hackman could get me to like a Wes Anderson movie. As the patriarch of the dysfunctional Tenenbaum clan, Hackman gives an Oscar-worthy performance. His prickliness cuts through Anderson's usual annoying whimsy, and he brings out the best in the ensemble cast. Anderson's best movie, which isn't saying much. (April 29, 7 p.m., 35mm) Double feature: In 1970's 'I Never Sang for my Father,' the shoe is on the other foot: This time, Hackman is the son seeking approval from his hardened father. That 'French Connection' Oscar may be a consolation prize for him losing the Oscar for this film. (Available on Prime) To learn more , visit Odie Henderson is the Boston Globe's film critic.
The Guardian
12-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy review – giant laughs for Hugh Grant but weepie sequel is strangely dazed
The last Bridget Jones film – the second sequel, about Bridget having a baby – executed the daring athletic leap of jumping the shark and then jumping back. There were some tired novelties but, by virtue of its conscientiously maintained stream of likable gags, it leapt back into our hearts and BJ3 seemed a decent way to sign off the franchise and remember Helen Fielding's inspired creation. But though I was willing myself to enjoy this fourth film, about the heroine's adventure with a younger man, the Bridget Jones series has frankly run out of steam. This is a fourquel in the same unhappy tradition as Superman IV: The Quest for Peace. The jokes have been dialled down to accommodate a contrived and unconvincingly mature 'weepie' component but the film becomes sad in the wrong way. The actors are mostly going through the motions, there is so little chemistry between each of the two lead pairings they resemble a panda being forced to mate with a flamingo, and Renée Zellweger's performance is starting to look eccentric. There are one or two nice touches: an uproarious pastiche of the Levi's swimmer TV ad gives us a Darcy 2.0 hunk in the water and showcases Dinah Washington's performance of Mad About the Boy; there's a nice gag about Bridget being asked by a young man at the till if she wants to complete her meal deal. Naturally Hugh Grant gets giant laughs, returning as the ageing, golden-hearted cad Daniel Cleaver. So does Emma Thompson, back as the down-to-earth gynaecologist from the previous film. But Bridget herself looks marooned and oddly dazed. Those who don't want to know what is revealed in the trailer's opening moments had better look away now … but Bridget's husband has died. Carrie Bradshaw's Mr Big collapsed fatally and ignominiously on his Peloton, but human rights lawyer Mark Darcy has somehow nobly expired doing his good works in foreign parts and the movie doesn't give us the details. Bridget is now left a widow living in a gorgeous house in Hampstead, north London, with two preteen children, Billy (Casper Knopf) – the 'baby' from the last film – and Mabel (Mila Janković) who get babysat by their cool Uncle Daniel and go to a posh prep school, presided over by uptight yet fanciable science teacher Mr Wallaker (Chiwetel Ejiofor). All of Bridget's mates return in continuing laugh-free cameos, including Shazzer (Sally Phillips), Jude (Shirley Henderson), Tom (James Callis), Miranda (Sarah Solemani) and Talitha (Josette Simon). Bridget's mum and dad, Gemma Jones and Jim Broadbent, return too on a melancholy note and Celia Imrie is there so briefly she is almost subliminal. After such a long time in brave misery, Bridget decides to revamp her life: she goes back to work as the world's ditsiest TV producer and her friends urge her to get back in the dating scene. And so, on a thrillingly cradle-snatching basis, she ends her shag drought by hooking up on Tinder with Roxster, played by Leo Woodall, a sexy young park attendant at Hampstead Heath who gallantly rescues Bridget and her two kids when they get stuck up a tree. So this age-inappropriate affair continues, and incidentally all these recent older-woman-younger-man movies such as Babygirl, A Family Affair and The Idea of You are surely just marking time while the French cinema industry finally plucks up the courage to tackle the grande affaire of Brigitte and Emmanuel Macron. And yet something else happens in Bridget's love life when she volunteers to help out on a school excursion led by Mr Wallaker – what looks like a geographically startling weekend trip from London to the picturesque Lake District, for which the school minibus has perhaps been fitted with supersonic jet engines or a Star Trek matter transporter. With the exception of Grant and Thompson, really all of the actors are phoning (or rather voice-noting) it in, though this is a function of the material. Zellweger looks as if she's thinking about something else and Woodall has none of the charm and believable humanity he has showed us before – the scenes here on Hampstead Heath are an uneasy, inadvertent echo of his romantic One Day moments on Primrose Hill. Fans might prefer to remember the previous three films. Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy is released on 12 February in Australia and the UK, and on 13 February on Peacock in the US.
