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Frances McDormand

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorwire’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week’s new releases are universally underwhelming (you may be tempted to watch Scream 4, but in the name of all that is Craven, resist that temptation), but we got a look at the titles expiring over the next couple of weeks and were amazed by how many great movies are disappearing — so the theme of this week’s streaming movie guide is, apparently, Watch Them While You Can. Join us after the jump for great stuff from Philip Seymour Hoffman, Billy Bob Thornton, Frances McDormand, Ethan Hawke, Robert De Niro, Gael García Bernal, Diego Luna, James Gandolfini, Marisa Tomei, the Coen Brothers, Mel Brooks, Sidney Lumet, Robert Altman, and Alfonso Cuarón, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Film

‘Promised Land’ and the Pitfalls of Political Cinema

By Jason Bailey on

Fracking is bad. This is not a unanimously held view; like so much of environmental policy in this country, the greasy sway of dirty money has turned what should be a health issue into a political one, and as a result, the issue of hydraulic fracturing has become one of predominately liberal interest, taken up by progressive organizations and left-leaning docs like GasLand. And now it is the subject of Promised Land, a message movie from director Gus Van Sant and writer/actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski that plays less like drama and more like a 106-minute forgone conclusion — and as a warning of the potential pitfalls of narrative political cinema. … Read More

Partner Buzz

Wes Anderson: The Flavorpill Interview

By Jason Bailey on

When Suzy (Kara Hayward), the 12-year-old heroine of Wes Anderson’s marvelous new film Moonrise Kingdom, runs away from home to spend a week camping with her pen pal and potential beau Sam (Jared Gillman), she brings along a battery-powered record player, her kitten, and a big suitcase filled with books (as seen in our exclusive clip below). Their import does not feel accidental (as, indeed, nothing seems accidental in a Wes Anderson film), and although the books are made-up, they echo a specific kind of young adult literature of the 1960s and 1970s, the kind of books E.L. Konigsburg or Virginia Hamilton would write, books where children were the protagonists, but the themes were contemplative and mature. And Moonrise Kingdom is that way too. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Indie Flicks to See in May

By Jason Bailey on

It’s May 1st, and the summer blockbuster season begins with explosions and superheroes galore this Friday as The Avengers hits theaters. And though we’re looking forward to that and a few other big summer movies, it’s easy — particularly in this season — to overlook the smaller and more challenging movies that are rolling into your local multiplexes and arthouses. Thus, we’re kicking off a new monthly feature here at Flavorwire, where we’ll take a look at some of the exciting indies of the month to a come, and a few smaller titles from previous weeks that you might’ve missed. Check them out after the jump! … Read More

Film

Trailer Park: Coming of Age and Going to War

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. We’ve got seven new trailers for you this week; check ‘em all out after the jump. … Read More

Film

Trailer Park: Scorsese, Soderbergh, Spielberg… and Sandler

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to “Trailer Park,” our regular Friday feature where we collect the week’s new trailers all in one place and do a little “judging a book by its cover,” ranking them from worst to best and taking our best guess at what they may be hiding. This week, we’ve got new films from Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, and Guy Ritchie — but don’t get too excited, there’s a new Adam Sandler movie too. Check ‘em all out after the jump. … Read More

News

The Morning’s Top 5 Pop Culture Stories

By Caroline Stanley on

1. Both the album art and tracklisting for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way album have surfaced online. Although her publicist hasn’t confirmed anything yet, the images suggest that there are 14 songs, with the title track as the album’s opening song. [via NME]

2. Zach Galifianakis has signed a first-look deal… Read More

Film

Video of the Day: Every Line of Dialogue in ‘The Lost Boys’ Is ‘Michael’

By Jason Bailey on

One of our favorite underrated movies is Wonder Boys, director Curtis Hanson’s film version of Michael Chabon’s terrific novel. It’s smart, it’s funny, it’s heartwarming, and it’s got a livewire Robert Downey Jr., an understated Michael Douglas, a pre-Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, a pre-Xenu Katie Holmes, and Frances McDormand (who requires no qualifications) — and, on top of all of that, Bob Dylan’s Oscar-winning “Things Have Changed.” Yep, Wonder Boys is pretty much a perfect movie — except for one flaw. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Caroline Stanley on

Today at Flavorpill, we decided that if you’re a music lover, Yo Gabba Gabba is > than MTV. We looked at 15 portraits of presidents with ham. We wished that Anna “My Girl” Chlumsky would shorten her matronly hemline — Vada Sultenfuss might have been death-obsessed, but she also showed… Read More