Fred Topel Often when celebrities provide the voices for animated characters, they sound exactly like their famous selves. Even Shrek is reminiscent of Mike Myers’ famous Scottish characters. Tom Hiddleston and Eddie Redmayne don’t sound anything like themselves in Early Man. The animated film from the creators of Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, Early Man stars
Black Panther was the first black comic book superhero. Now he’s finally getting his own movie (read our review) after Chadwick Boseman portrayed him in Captain America: Civil War. King T’Challa (Boseman) is from the fictional African country of Wakanda. So when he speaks, Boseman wanted him to have an African accent. “When you’re trained
Fans of the glory days of National Lampoon and Saturday Night Live can relive the landmark ‘70s comedies in Netflix’s new movie A Futile and Stupid Gesture. Tom Lennon plays Michael O’Donoghue, a National Lampoon writer who was one of the original SNL cast members. Lennon performed the famous Wolverines sketch, in which John Belushi
The Netflix film A Futile and Stupid Gesture tells the story of National Lampoon founder Doug Kenney (Will Forte). When he is at Harvard with Henry Beard (Domhnall Gleeson), they start a food fight. It’s easy to observe the food fight is a motif that would inspire the later National Lampoon film Animal House. The
Search was an awesome discovery at Sundance. Though presented entirely on a computer screen as a frantic father (John Cho) looks for his missing daughter, Search is not a gimmick. Within a day of its Sundance premiere, Search sold to Sony so you’ll see it later this year. Monsters and Critics sat down with writer/director
Christina Choe’s feature film debut won her a Sundance Film Festival award for screenwriting. Choe wrote and directed Nancy, starring Andrea Riseborough as a woman who claims to be the long lost kidnapped daughter of a still grieving couple (J. Smith-Cameron and Steve Buscemi). Monsters and Critics spoke with Choe midweek at Sundance before she
If you’re still watching the third movie, you know what you’re getting. Fifty Shades Freed certainly is another one! If you take it seriously, it’ll make you swoon more. Or, maybe you’ll just laugh even harder at the absurdity. Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) and Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) are married now, but Christian’s having a
When directors with distinct sense of humor do Marvel movies, they get more attention for putting their stamp on it. When a director’s specialty is character drama, it may float under the radar. Ryan Coogler gets those moments out of Black Panther, and the rest of the Marvel formula remains intact. Ulysses Klaue (Andy Serkis)
The Elliott family is now three generations deep into comedy. It began with Bob Elliott, half of the comedy duo Bob and Ray. His son Chris Elliott went into comedy on Late Night with David Letterman, his own sitcom Get a Life (costarring Bob) and movies like Groundhog Day and There’s Something About Mary. Now
The Netflix original movie A Futile and Stupid Gesture tells the true story of National Lampoon co-founder Doug Kenney (Will Forte). It goes as far as the National Lampoon production of Animal House and Kenney’s Caddyshack before he died. Knowing that part of Kenney’s story would include Animal House, director David Wain didn’t want to