You lied to me, Shrek 4 poster. YOU LIED TO ME!!!
Very sad news out of Japan: According to Mental Floss, Funai Electric, the last company making VCRs has announced that it will cease production of VCRs, “due to declining sales and difficulty acquiring parts.” Though effectively on life support for the last several years, the will mark the true and final death of the VCR, or video cassette recorder. It was 40 years old.
We’re so close, guys. So close to the end of summer movie season and the start of the fall, when the weather cools down and the movies start to get interesting again. I don’t know that The Girl on the Train is going to be an awards contender, but it certainly looks like a juicy thriller.
That clip above is the great sizzle reel for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story that just debuted at Star Wars Celebration. But if you were watching the live-feed from the convention, you know that right before the panel wrapped up, Kathleen Kennedy introduced a brand-new Rogue One trailer, that wasn’t streamed live on YouTube. If you weren’t in the room, you were out of luck.
My favorite part of any Star Wars panel like the one today at Star Wars Celebration is the terrified looks on the cast members when they’re asked to talk about their characters. They sweat and stammer, and look nervously at Kathleen Kennedy like at any moment if they say the wrong thing she’s going to end them with a Darth Vader Force choke.
If you got the feeling of deja vu watching Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot, it wasn’t just something strange in your neighborhood. The new movie is loaded, from one end to the next with references and homages to Ivan Reitman’s 1984 original. It’s haunted, you might say. (And I did, in my review of the film.)
If you can’t decide what to watch this weekend, ScreenCrush’s Staff Picks are here to help. They’re like the curated recommendations at an old video store, except you don’t have to put on pants or go outside to get them. Here are three things to watch this weekend:
July 4th: A time for cookouts, fireworks, and big movies. The list of titles released on this holiday weekend since 1982 is one massive blockbuster after another: Terminator 2, Spider-Man 2, Despicable Me 2, Independence Day, Die Hard 2, The Perfect Storm, Armageddon, Men in Black, Superman Returns, a bunch of Transformers, and so on. There are July 4th flops (The Lone Ranger, Wild Wild West) but there’s also a dozen films that opened with at least $50 million in domestic grosses.
In the middle of a summer movie season like the one we’re in now, it can be hard to stand out. There is a lot of competition. The BFG and The Legend of Tarzan open this friday; Independence Day: Resurgence opened last Friday. Big blockbuster pictures like X-Men: Apocalypse, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Warcraft, Captain America: Civil War, and The Jungle Book are all still playing in theaters. From a distance a lot of these movies begin to blend together.
Do critics matter? Do people actually care about film reviews? These questions are almost as old as cinema itself, and they seem to get ask anew every couple of months, whenever a critically acclaimed movie flops or a critically drubbed one becomes a massive success. At least as bigger movies go, the conventional wisdom is that critics don’t really make an impact. Backed by enormous multimillion dollar marketing budgets and huge brand awareness, the studio’s tentpole releases are often considered critic-proof. Supposedly it’s smaller, specialty releases that can benefit from (or be hurt by) film critics.
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