Battle Of The Sexes Review

Battle of the Sexes is, at best, a light volley of banter and debate over important topics, rather than a hard-hitting expose with contemporary ties to ongoing gender discussions (which it easily could have been).

Given the film's synopsis, I expected Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris' sports biopic Battle of the Sexes to be about tennis. Specifically, I anticipated it being about the highly-publicized 1973 exhibition match between female tennis sensation Billie Jean King (Emma Stone) and former tennis champ Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell).

It's not. I mean, Battle of the Sexes does gradually build to the staging of this groundbreaking competition, an event that still to this day holds the distinction of being the largest audience to watch a tennis match in the United States (an estimated 90 million viewed the match worldwide, with 30,472 in the Houston Astrodome to witness it live). But tennis is a virtual afterthought in this movie -- there's a shocking lack of actual tennis being played on screen -- while Dayton and Faris focus, instead, on the melodramatic personal developments in the lives of the two lead characters at their disposal. Battle of the Sexes wants us to understand King and Riggs off the court, as people. The match they finally play against each other is essentially inconsequential to the point of this story.

And in the larger context, Battles of the Sexes is the story of Billie Jean King, who was facing numerous "conflicts" off the court that are, tangentially, tied to her status as the world's top female tennis player at the time. The movie begins with the 29-year-old King (Stone) wining three Grand Slam singles titles, proving her dominance over her chosen sport. However, King and her fellow female pro players remain at odds with Jack Kramer (Bill Pullman) and the chauvinistic execs in the world tennis association, who favor male players and refuse to offer women equal prize money. Backed by some of the country's top female players, Billie Jean branches out and forms her own competition circuit, making both hay and headlines as they take their show on the road.

It's on the road that King meets, and gradually falls for, Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough), a California hairstylist who drops everything and begins following Billie Jean as she travels from tournament to tournament. The problem? Billie Jean King was married at the time to Larry King (Austin Stowell), so in addition to fighting for equality on the pro circuit and wrestling with her romantic entanglements in the roadside motels of the new ladies' tennis circuit, King was also watching her game slip because her focus on actual tennis was wavering.

There's more than enough rich material in this fertile chapter of Billie Jean King's personal and professional biography to sustain a feature film (read up on the repercussions of King's outing as a lesbian after you leave Battle), but this also means that Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) gets short-changed by Battle of the Sexes... despite the fact that his side of the story is equally compelling. A gambling addict, Riggs appeared to miss the limelight that used to come with his tennis success. When a cronie plants the spark of a marketing idea in Bobby's head that he'd make a fortune by returning to the courts to play the world's top female tennis athlete, Riggs can't let it go. He embraces the sideshow that becomes the pursuit to stage the Battle of the Sexes. But he also juggles a deteriorating marriage to Priscilla Wheelan (Elisabeth Shue), for reasons that are hardly touched on in this film.

Battle of the Sexes might have been better if it focused intently on one or two of these important issues. By tackling all of them, it shoulders too large of a load, and appears to give the Cliff's Notes version of some significant chapters in Billie Jean King's history. Stone and Carell are good in their roles, though they don't share the screen until the picture's end, so it's as if they're operating in two disconnected stories that marry almost accidentally. And the film takes a safe, soft approach to complicated topics of sexism in the pro-sports arena, the sacrifices one takes to be the best in any chosen profession, and the repercussions of trying to live life in the afterglow of global success.

While not quite toothless, Battle of the Sexes is, at best, a light volley of banter and debate over important topics, rather than a hard-hitting expose with contemporary ties to ongoing gender discussions (which it easily could have been). It does an admirable job of explaining how and why then "battle" between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs was bigger than the actual match. But in the end, it'll be remembered as being a movie about several important topics, rather than being an important movie in and of itself.

Read more >> Gerald’s Game Review & Trailer

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Gerald’s Game Review & Trailer

With the thrill and punch of the better Stephen King films we've experienced, Netflix has now officially entered the Stephen King business with Gerald's Game. If this is any indication of what a continued partnership would bring, both parties should look for as many chances as they can to stay together.

It's been said before, and it'll be said again: 2017 has been the year for Stephen King adaptations. And with Netflix's release of Gerald's Game, the famous author's work has yet again been plucked from the page, and given new life on the screen. While the novel seems to have a reputation as one of King's lesser works, the film is the polar opposite, as it is a claustrophobic head trip that is set to dazzle the audiences who are about to enjoy its contents.

Jessie (Carla Gugino) and Gerald Burlingame (Bruce Greenwood) head off to a secluded getaway for a weekend of marital rehab. With Gerald looking to spice things up with a little bit of kink, the couple gets off to a bad start when Jessie confronts him about his obsession with dominating her. Things only get worse when her husband dies due to a heart attack, just after he has handcuffed her to the bed. With no easy means of escape, and no one but herself in the room, Jessie's about to go through quite the interesting weekend.

So far this year, there have been two levels of Stephen King adaptation: either it's a Dark Tower level experiment, or an IT style success. Gerald's Game lands on the better side of the spectrum, as co-writer / director Mike Flanagan takes what could have been a solid hour of anthology TV and turns it into an engrossing feature film. The tension of Jessie's confinement, as well as the mental gymnastics she goes through due to her predicament, are all pitch perfect, with Carla Gugino carrying a substantial portion of the film.

Both Gugino and Bruce Greenwood turn in nuanced portrayals of a married couple on the proverbial rocks, and in the section of the film that opens on that story, they really do a good job of convincing the audience that they'd be perfectly ok if the film just focused on that story. Of course, this being a Stephen King story, things get deadly, and they get weird, with the stranger side of the spectrum allowing our duo to play different facets of their characters' psyches. While the bulk of the film is focused on Jessie's story, Greenwood's Gerald makes himself very much present throughout the narrative of Gerald's Game, without being intrusive or extreme. His character is ambiguous, being left for the audience to determine the level of his true villainy, and it shows through every piece of the finished product.

The best part about Gerald's Game, besides the presence of a powerful script with two equally luminary participants shining in its light, is the cinematography. Michael Fimognari's framing of the limited locations that the film takes place in is tight, but never restrictive for the sake of being so. Naturally flowing with the story's expanding and contracting viewpoint, it's a pretty fantastic film to watch, as well as to digest from a narrative perspective. Of course, all of this praise helps the one flaw of Gerald's Game's narrative stand out all the more.

While the film manages to bring itself in at a taut 103 minutes, the film could have been a little tighter if it didn't fall into an expository rabbit hole in its epilogue. Surely there are pieces and details that are vital to the story's ultimate catharsis, but considering how well paced the rest of the film before it was, the ending to Gerald's Game steals some of the wind from the movie's overall sails. The fact that a sequence of intense body horror and tension precedes this epilogue serves as a hard barrier between the two tones of the film, and if anything, the moments after the shock and awe of Flanagan's well-crafted film should have been shorter and sweeter.

With the thrill and punch of the better Stephen King films we've experienced, Netflix has now officially entered the Stephen King business with Gerald's Game. If this is any indication of what a continued partnership would bring, both parties should look for as many chances as they can to stay together.

Read more >> Flatliners Review

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Flatliners Review

Though competently directed and well-acted, Flatliners does little to set itself apart from a run-of-the-mill thriller. True to the material, it simply lacks a pulse.

What happens after we die? Is there truly an afterlife with a white light at the end of a long, dark tunnel? These existential questions have plagued humanity for millennia, but perhaps science has finally caught up with our desire to know the truth of existence. A reimagining of the 1990 film directed by Joel Schumacher, Niels Arden Oplev's Flatliners attempts to answer all of our questions about life after death, but while the movie works on a technical and performance level, its cheap scares and contrived plot do little to move the dial forward for the horror genre.

Neither a direct sequel nor a full-blown remake, Flatliners takes the core idea established by the 1990 original and updates it with a new cast of characters for a new generation. Haunted by a (possibly preventable) car crash that took the life of her younger sister nine years earlier, Courtney (Ellen Page) is a talented medical student who spends her evenings secretly studying the mystery of the afterlife. Discovering a possible path to experience the afterlife for brief stretches of time, Courtney enlists the help of fellow students Ray (Diego Luna), Marlo (Nina Dobrev), Sophia (Kiersey Clemons), and Jamie (James Norton) to kill her for one minute and then bring her back. As a result of this bold experiment, the students not only find a path to the afterlife, but they fundamentally rewire their brains to unlock the cognitive potential that they never thought was possible. The downside? They bring something evil back from the other side with them that wants to punish them for their sins.

2017 has seen some great horror movies debut -- whether it is Annabelle: Creation, It, or Get Out. Sadly, we cannot place the Flatliners update among those ranks. Yes, Niels Arden Oplev capably helms the sequel-boot from a purely visual standpoint. That said, while there are a few legitimately creepy sequences (such as one involving a ghostly little girl drawing by candlelight), Flatliners boils down to a series of fake-out jump scares scattered throughout a relatively predictable narrative, and culminates in a rushed climax that simply doesn't pay off the preceding story in an emotionally satisfying way. There's quite a bit of style here, but minimal substance.

As a result, while Flatliners opens quickly and commendably gets to the point almost immediately, the film loses its momentum once the concept of "flatlining" has been fully explained and fleshed out. Because of this, the second act mostly boils down to a series of haunts shared between each of the four main characters that go through with the procedure. Like the steady flow of a pulse on a heartbeat monitor, Flatliners eventually becomes so predictable that you can almost anticipate which of these young doctors will be the next to find themselves visited by a demonic apparition before it even happens.

In a certain sense, it almost feels like Flatliners has one hand unfortunately tied behind its back by its need to stick within the horror genre. This reimagining expands on the premise of the original by positing that flatlining enhances the cognitive function of these stressed out and overworked medical students. It creates an interesting Limitless-esque framework to explore how these characters can become fixated to this dangerous game (drug and addiction motifs play a significant role in the story), but those compelling ideas are sidestepped to focus on the scares. It's a shame, because what could've been a deeper examination of the original's core premise mostly just devolves into a retread that struggles to justify its existence.

The more notable issue that plagues the film's ensemble is the fact that script does not afford the actors much to do in their respective roles. What we need to know about any of the five core doctors is usually summed up by a comment made about them ("Medicine comes easy to you," for example), and we're not given much of a reason to root for them or care about what's happening. Their rationale for taking part in the flatlining procedure is inherently selfish from the get-go, and the added layer of their sins coming back to haunt them ultimately makes it hard even to want to root for most of them to make it out of the film alive.

Despite that issue, if there are two shining lights in Flatliners, they would have to be Diego Luna and Ellen Page. Even when Flatliners' script does not give them much to do, they milk the material for all it is worth and deliver the two best performances in the movie. Page deserves particular credit, as she throws herself into Courtney's obsessed nature and really lets loose when the character realizes what she has unleashed. It just would've been nice to see a more compelling story constructed around the heroine.

Though competently directed and well-acted, Flatliners does little to set itself apart from a run-of-the-mill thriller. True to the material, it simply lacks a pulse. On a superficial level, the film will most likely deliver the requisite scares (albeit cheap jump scares) to enter the Halloween season, but it probably will fail to leave a lasting impression.

Read more >> American Made Review

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Full Pitch Perfect 3 Trailer Sends The Bellas Out On An Emotional Note

Pitch Perfect didn't strike me as a comedy that would produce numerous sequels. Even the original movie made a persistent running joke out of the fact that a capella singing was uncool, and aspiring music producer Beca (Anna Kendrick) wanted nothing to do with the Barden Bellas. Only, she did. Because a capella cover songs actually ARE cool. And Pitch Perfect dialed into an ensemble of witty and lovable actresses who we wanted to spend more time with. And so, this December, Pitch Perfect 3 brings the trilogy to a close (we assume). Check out the latest trailer:

Pitch Perfect 3 picks up the microphone and sings a number of expected sequels tropes, which is probably unavoidable but worth noting all the same. We catch up with the original Bellas -- a group that includes Anna Kendrick, Rebel Wilson, Brittany Snow and Anna Camp -- as they are being passed on the professional level by the next generation of Bella singers (led by newfound pop star, and Pitch Perfect 2 standout, Hailee Steinfeld). Eager to recapture their sliver of the spotlight, the Bellas hit the road -- taking the action to Europe for a USO tour, where they plan to compete against another round of colorful competitors who hate everything the Bellas stand for.

 

The new trailer also introduces a wrinkle in the close-knit community of the Bellas. A record producer wants to sign Beca to a recording contract. Only, they just want Beca, and not the rest of the Bellas. Will she sacrifice her on-stage family for off-stage success?

I mean, if you watched either of the first two Pitch Perfect movies, you know the answer to that question. But you aren't really showing up for Pitch Perfect 3 for monumental character development and/or soap opera twists. You want cover songs, and this new trailer suggests that versions of George Michael's "Freedom" will be on your iPod by the time this movie is out of theaters.

As for when Pitch Perfect 3 opens... well, it's in the shadow of Star Wars: The Last Jedi. Which means it might work as counterprogramming. Or it might struggle to find a theater screen, as the Star Wars sequel gobbles up multiplex space. Will you see the conclusion of this fun and frivolous trilogy in theaters?

Read more >> Natalie Portman Confronts A Terrifying Mystery In First Annihilation Trailer

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When The Wii Shop Channel Will Cease Operations

Nintendo supports a lot of its older hardware and software for quite some time. In fact, the original Wii Shop Channel on the eShop is still up and available, despite the fact that the Wii released a whole 11 years ago. Well, the Big N won't be keeping the shop channel for the motion-controlled gaming console open for too much longer... if you don't consider January, 2019 to be "too much longer."

According to Gematsu, Nintendo has plans on shutting down the Wii Shop Channel starting January 31st, 2019. The site picked up the news from the official Nintendo of Japan website, where the site states that Wii Points will no longer be purchasable after March 27th, 2018.

You'll still be able to use those points that you've acquired to pick up Virtual Console titles for the Wii, along with WiiWare games. For unused points or those purchased with a prepaid card, Nintendo has plans on refunding those following the closing of the Wii Shop Channel, but details on how to get a refund were not disclosed at this moment. The company has plans on sending the announcement soon, though.

Now, if you're worried about your digital purchases, you'll still be able to re-download all your games that you've already purchased from the eShop, including both Virtual Console titles and WiiWare games.

Additionally, Wii owners will still be able to make use of the Wii system transfer that allows gamers to move content from the Wii to the Wii U. So if you're one of those rare people with a Wii U in your possession, you can move over your Wii content to the Wii U. Gematsu notes that eventually these secondary services for the Wii will eventually be shutdown as well, and at that point you will no longer be able to re-download your games to a Wii console. This means that you'll most definitely want to download all your WiiWare and Virtual Console games now before it's too late.

Obviously, even with a two year heads-up before the Wii Shop Channel closes for good, a lot of gamers are still absolutely unimpressed with the whole digital landscape of buying games since, one day, the service will shutdown and you will lose all of those digital purchases.

It's exceptionally frightening for a lot of big AAA games (even those released on physical disc) that require day-one patches just to operate or an online handshake before you can play. Once those servers go down for good the game is lost to time.

Organizations like the EFF have been attempting to advocate on behalf of emulation as a means of preservation for some types of games that can no longer be purchased physically and are no longer available digitally. But the digital landscape is always going to suffer from this particular problem.

However, in Nintendo's case this could be remedied if the company decides to open up the Virtual Console for the Nintendo Switch, which is something gamers have been clamoring for since the console's announcement. If the Switch does receive Virtual Console support, then it could easily make up for the Wii's channel being brought to a close on the eShop.

Read more >> Why Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 Almost Didn’t Happen

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Why Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 Almost Didn’t Happen

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was Marvel's first major live-action television show, coming years before the Netflix leg of the Marvel universe kicked off. The four seasons so far have been a hit with diehard fans, and Season 4 changed things up in some exciting ways. That said, ratings have been declining more or less steadily since the beginning, and fans have had to worry that S.H.I.E.L.D. would get the axe just about every spring. As it turns out, we were right to worry about the show while Season 4 was still on the air. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5 almost didn't happen due to some behind-the-scenes opinions at ABC.

ABC and Marvel have reportedly not been on the same page when it comes to both of their current shared comic properties. According to Variety, some folks behind the scenes at ABC wanted to cancel Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. after Season 4, but Disney mandated that S.H.I.E.L.D. be renewed for Season 5. While it's not clear why some at ABC thought it was time to give S.H.I.E.L.D. the axe, the odds are that the combination of disappointing ratings and high effects costs meant that S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't exactly a top priority series for renewal.

It's worth noting that ABC did make some changes for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. this year. The show aired for the first four seasons in various time slots on Tuesday nights, with a premiere in late September. For Season 5, the show was pushed back to a winter debut and will air on Fridays. Although the show was technically pushed back to allow ABC to air Inhumans, a move to Friday is rarely a good thing for a show. That said, S.H.I.E.L.D. was still ordered for a full season, despite being pushed back, and ABC Chief Channing Dungey has said that the goal is to turn Fridays on ABC into a fantasy destination, with Inhumans/S.H.I.E.L.D. paired with Once Upon a Time.

We can only hope that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. gets a ratings boost in Season 5 so that ABC doesn't regret the mandate from Disney that they renew the Marvel series for another batch of episodes. The Season 4 finale ended on a crazy cliffhanger that could have devastating consequences, which might be a big draw for viewers. We also know of a major character slated to return in Season 5, along with a possible Kree presence.

Of course, the reception for S.H.I.E.L.D. might at least partially depend on how Inhumans performs in primetime. The new show isn't generating much in the way of positive buzz with critics, and it didn't run in IMAX for as long as we thought. If Inhumans doesn't resonate with viewers and flops, then people might not be inclined to return for more Marvel on ABC. We'll have to wait and see.

ABC has not yet announced an official premiere date for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Season 5, so be sure to stay tuned to CinemaBlend for the latest news. Inhumans will debut on Friday, September 29 at 8 p.m. ET on ABC. Our fall TV guide can help you plan the rest of your small screen lineup moving forward.

Source: cinemablend

Read more >> Natalie Portman Confronts A Terrifying Mystery In First Annihilation Trailer

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Natalie Portman Confronts A Terrifying Mystery In First Annihilation Trailer

We don't know a great deal about the newest movie by the creator of Ex Machina which stars Natalie Portman. However, after seeing the first trailer for the new project, you will almost certainly be curious. The trailer shows a team entering a bizarre and mysterious stretch of wilderness and what they find there, well, it apparently defies description. Check out the trailer below.

Annihilation is based on a book series by Jeff VanderMeer, so those who have read the books will know exactly what it is that's being described here. For the rest of us, however, everything is being kept incredibly mysterious. The trailer gives away nothing about what's going on. The soundtrack makes everything in the trailer feel constricting and claustrophobic, even though everything we see feels open. There's clearly a horror movie vibe to the trailer, but there's just as clearly a lot more going on.

What we can discern from the trailer is that Natalie Portman is actually part of a second team to go into this strange area, following her husband who had gone in previously. However, even after this second incursion, it seems little more has been learned by the characters about what is going on, meaning that the audience is going to be that much more in the dark. This is how a good teaser trailer is made. The movie has only teased us with what is happening, but we're desperate to know more.

Annihilation has one of the more remarkable casts we've seen together in quite some time. In addition to Natalie Portman, the film stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez, Tessa Thompson, Tuva Novotny and Oscar Isaac.

It's been over a year since we've seen anything significant from the production of Annihilation. A couple of images from the set were sent out on social media. They looked like interesting pictures at the time, but they don't even compare to the final product that we're seeing here. Everything is both lovely and terrifying at the same time. Writer and Director Alex Garland brought in his Ex Machina cinematographer Robert Hardy to shoot this film as well and based on the trailer it looks like a masterful job was done.

 

While we're looking forward to solving this mystery, we'll have to wait a few more months to do so. Annihilation is set for release on February 23, 2018.

Source: cinemablend

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