Awesome Movies

A documentary about Chinese filmmaker Jia Zhangke (Still Life, Mountains May Depart), whose meditative films often depict the ill effects of China’s economic boom from the perspective of normal citizens. Directed by Walter Salles (The Motorcycle Diaries).

Veteran animated film artist, writer and director Brenda Chapman (Brave, The Prince of Egypt, Beauty and the Beast) spoke with the Oscars about her creative process, the idiosyncrasies of editing animated works, and her inspiration for Brave.

Filmmaker Penny Lane (Our Nixon) presents Nuts!, a documentary about the infamous scammer John R. Brinkley. Brinkley became rich and famous by transplanting goat testicles into people as a cure for impotence and other diseases. Which of course didn’t work.

“Who are all these goddamn people?!” The Onion’s film critic Peter K. Rosenthal was thoroughly confused by Captain America: Civil War‘s ensemble cast. Who is Black Widow? Or Falcon? What motivates Random Bystander? Seriously though, stop with the origin stories.

“Tell me. Do you… have insurance?” HISHE finally gets around to slaughtering the travesty that is Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, from its infuriatingly stupid titular heroes to the totally avoidable ending. The real question here is why the movie even began production.

The Film Theorists share interesting trivia behind the production of The Avengers, including how Marvel retained creative control by funding its own movie studio, and how director Joss Whedon saved us from a potentially disastrous script.

Channel Criswell breaks downs the style of filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Tarkovsky’s approach is pure in that he created stories that could only be told through cinema, visualizing what the characters are feeling rather than what’s happening to them.

A biopic about one of the most important figures of the 21st century. It’s an Oliver Stone film, but this cheesy trailer doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. But hey, if it turns out to be a bad film at least we already know how it all played out. And there’s Citizenfour.

What Is debuts with a primer on how motion picture film or film stock works. They enumerate the sizes of film used and how videos are captured on each frame. However, the latter is oversimplified, so you should dig deeper if you’re interested.

CineFix ranks its top 10 picks for the best movie casts. There are those whose actors have become synonymous with their roles, co-stars with wonderful chemistry and the unicorns on opposite ends: movies filled with amateurs and movies with ensemble casts.

Unlike many recent superhero movies, Fox’s X-Men films have shied away from colorful and distinctive costumes. Kaptain Kristian points out how ironic this is, given that this team symbolizes oppressed minorities accepting who they are and standing up for their identities.

Skywalker Sound’s lead Foley artist John Roesch shows off some of the objects that he uses to make believable sounds for movies, such as a feather duster for mimicking birds flapping their wings, a small tray with casters to mimic skateboard sounds and more.

Cyclops goes up against Storm, Beast trades blows with Psylocke and the dashing Oscar Isaac turns into Jabba the Hutt’s left nut in the final trailer for X-Men: Apocalypse. We can’t wait to see how Jubilee will be of absolutely no use to anyone.

YouTuber Aldo Jones loves to make movie trailers hilariously senseless using visual effects, such as warping characters’ faces and adding extra imagery. Here’s what he did to the last Captain America: Civil War trailer. Tony Stark turning into Lincoln Osiris killed us.

Bryan Cranston stars as former undercover agent Robert Mazur. In 1987, Mazur infiltrated the BCCI, a private bank that laundered money for several corrupt leaders and drug lords, including the Medellin Cartel. Based on Mazur’s eponymous memoir (SPOILERS).

The latest trailer for Warcraft‘s big screen adaptation introduces more characters aside from co-protagonists Lothar and Durotan. There’s Garona, Medivh, Orgrim and King Llane Wrynn. They must all unite to beat the otherworldly force known as dubstep.

Screen Junkies takes on Bryan Singer’s Superman ho-boo-quel that somehow manages to be both creepy and boring at the same time. Supes’ flicks make him look like a dumb relic, but there are sublime stories about him. It’s just really hard to tell great tales about a god.

Matt Damon reprises his role as the brainwashed super spy. We’re not sure what his deal is this time, but Damon has said he wouldn’t star in another Bourne flick if it didn’t move the character forward. Which is why they should have called this David Webb.

Georgina Hayns is a Creative Supervisor at Laika, the animation studio behind Boxtrolls, Coraline and more. She recently spoke with The Oscars about how they bring a stop-motion puppet to life, a process that takes up to 6 months per puppet.

(PG-13: Language) The Nice Guys’ Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling star in this meta-viral video for their film where they consult a shrink (Big Bang Theory‘s Melissa Rauch) to settle their issues. Longer versions here and here.

(Flashing lights) Ellie Fanning stars as a young aspiring model who is “devoured” – figuratively, we hope – by Los Angeles’ beauty-obsessed women. It seems like your usual Nicolas Winding Refn film, blurring the line between the grotesque and the beautiful.

(PG-13: Language) While you may not agree or feel as strongly as YouTuber I Hate Everything does about the flood of superhero flicks, he makes several great points. A movie should stand on its own, not be a mishmash of references, CGI and teasers for sequels.

(Gore) The Cracked crew argues over which alien from the movies would be able to successfully invade and conquer our planet. Would it be Xenomorphs? The Thing? Predators? We kept waiting for HISHE’s Batman to show up and warn them about Supes.