A Simple Favor Is A Delightfully Unhinged Comedic Thriller

A Simple Favor is the latest in a long line of movies to be woefully mismarketed. Conventional trailers and commercials for the latest Paul Feig directorial effort try to portray the feature as being in the vein of recent financially lucrative Fall thrillers like The Girl On The Train and Gone Girl, but A Simple Favor is far different than those two movies. Instead of being a straightforward dramatic thriller, A Simple Favor is instead a movie that is to loopy thrillers what Rampage was to big monster movies, a big-budget star-studded homage to that just revels in all kinds of trashy twists and "Gotcha!" shock moments. Also like Rampage, A Simple Favor is super fun to watch.

In Laman's Terms: Why Do We Love Superheroes?

In Laman's Terms is a weekly editorial column where Douglas Laman rambles on about certain topics or ideas that have been on his mind lately. Sometimes he's got serious subjects to discuss, other times he's just got some silly stuff to shoot the breeze about. Either way, you know he's gonna talk about something In Laman's Terms!

Like many superhero obsessed adults, my love for superheroes was instilled at a young age. But unlike many superhero obsessed adults, the source of my love for superheroes came from an unexpected place. Whereas the source of one's adoration of captured crusaders may conventionally be a specific comic book or movie, mine came from a 2002 children's book entitled I Am Spider-Man. This book was my first ever, and for a long time only, exposure to both Spider-Man and superheroes in general. It was a simple tome, outlining the origin story for how Peter Parker became Spider-Man and what he does on a regular basis as a neighborhood-friendly wall-crawler. The book itself was a formative one for me, but two pages, in particular, in this book stuck out to me then and still lingers in my mind today.

The Animated Spider-Man Movie Gets Miles Morales As A Lead Character And Nabs Two Promising Directors

While this summer's Spider-Man: Homecoming will be a collaborative effort between Sony and Marvel Studios, there is a Spider-Man movie coming in December 2018 that's wholly a Sony effort. This untitled project is an entirely animated Spider-Man movie from Sony Pictures Animation that two fellows by the name of Phil Lord & Chris Miller are writing and executive producing. Today, Sony officially announced that the lead character of this movie would be Miles Morales, something that had been rumored for ages now but was a welcome sight to see made official.

Captain America: Civil War Review

If I had a time machine, ya know where I'd go? Back to March 2003, the month when the pilot for the classic TV series Arrested Development was filmed. Somehow, I'd find a way to talk to the duo directing this pilot, two individuals by the name of Anthony and Joe Russo. I'd take them aside momentarily to tell them that not only would the show they're currently working on would go on to become one of the most prolific TV comedies of all-time, but these two would be responsible for two of the most beloved blockbusters in one of the biggest film franchises ever to exist.

Spider-Man Review

For 50 years, the thought had crept into the minds of everyone across the planet...what would a Spider-Man movie look like? For some, it was just a passing mental diversion, a notion that would fade as quickly as it came. For others, it was a concept that persisted in their cranium, imagining what the web-crawler would look like in the realm of live-action cinema. Considering how much of a grip Spider-Man had had on pop culture, it's understandable why such a proposal would have inhabited the imaginations of billions of individuals around the world. The comic book saga of meek Peter Parker gaining superhero abilities had emerged as one of the great modern-day fictional media creations.

J.K. Simmons Gets On Zack Snyder's Tempo, Will Play Commissioner Gordon In Justice League

After numerous false starts (one of which, back in 2007, even had George Miller onboard to direct!), a live-action Justice League movie is on the way from director Zack Snyder, with filming set to start on April 11, 2016. In terms of new characters in the film, there's no official word on who the bad guy of the production is, but some imagery from the Batman v. Superman promotional materials explicitly spells out the idea that Darkseid will factor heavily into the plot. But we do have word on another new character that'll be in the film, Commissioner Gordon, who will be played by J.K. Simmons in the film, and presumably will reprise the role in future DC Comics features like a solo Batman movie.

Sony Refuses To Learn From Their Recent Mistakes, Greenlights Solo Venom Movie

There was a time, dear reader, when the concept of a live-action Spider-Man movie was an enthralling one to prospective moviegoers. After two decades of trying to get a live-action film off the ground, the Sam Raimi Spider-Man busted box office records in 2002, gained critical acclaim and spawned a sequel that is still considered to be one of the superhero movies of all-time. Then the flawed Spider-Man 3 arrived, followed up the dark era where the two Amazing Spider-Man films arrived. These new features, created solely so Sony/Columbia could cling to the film rights to the character, got worse as they went along, and the cinematic shared universe (complete with Sinister Six, Venom and Aunt May spin-offs) it was supposed to spawn sounded like a nightmare waiting to happen.

X-Men Is Far Far From Perfect, But It Forever Changed the Superhero Movie Game

This Friday brings a project to the big screen few thought would ever truly exist...a live-action Deadpool movie. The eighth feature film in the live-action X-Men feature film series in 16 years, it's one of a number of project Fox has in the pipeline for this universe of mutants, most of which are movies (X-Men: Apocalypse of course arrives in May, and next year will bring the final solo Hugh Jackman as Wolverine movie and will likely unleash a solo Gambit film unto the Earth) and a few of which are TV shows (such as the Dan Stevens FX program Legion). With all of these mutant projects on the horizon, it's easy to forget this whole shindig started with one little 2000 feature film called (what else?) X-Men.

Fan-Casting The Sinister Six

One aspect of the Spider-Man movies that surprises me is how, even though we've had five films centered around the web-crawler, there's so many parts of the characters mythology we have yet to see in cinematic form. Black Cat, Sinister Six, Kraven The Hunter, Vulture, Mysterio....so many creations from the comics have yet to see the light of a film projector. Part of the blame for these characters staying on the wayside can be attributed  how The Amazing Spider-Man retread an enormous amount of storytelling ground from the Sam Raimi Spider-Man films, meaning time that could have been spent setting up new characters like The Chameleon and Silver Sable was spent going over the whole Uncle Ben fiasco again.

Tom Holland Is The New Spider-Man!!!

It's been the question on everyone's mind ever since Marvel announced they'd gotten the rights to have Spider-Man in their movies...who would be the new version of Peter Parker? I'd been rooting for Tony Revelori to get the role (he proved he could pull of a meekish personality and deliver one-liners beautifully in The Grand Budapest Hotel), but it appears Marvel has gone in a new direction for the character. Marvel has just announced Tom Holland has been chosen to be the new Spider-Man, with Jon Watts directing the 2017 Spider-Man feature!

Who Should Play The New Spider-Man?

A barrage of questions hinge on the extraordinary news that Sony and Marvel Studios are teaming up to incorporate Spider-Man into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, with him popping up in an MCU movie before his own solo feature in July 2017. But here's the million dollar question everybody's wondering...who should play the legendary web-crawler?

Spider-Man's Back Home At Marvel Studios....Now What?

This morning, I woke up, and as usual, checked my phone, seeing what was new on the interwebs. The first app I opened was Instagram, where I saw a post declaring that Spider-Man was back home at Marvel. It took a few moments for my brain to register this...was this real? Am I dreaming? A quick check on everywhere, from Slashfilm, to Comingsoon.net, told me that this was no dream. This was an all-too real reality.

Your neighborhood friendly Spider-Man is swinging into the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

New Female Centered Potential Spider-Man Movie From Sony Sounds Like It Could Be....Good????

MASSIVE THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 SPOILERS FOLLOW

A ton of things have been wasted in the Amazing Spider-Man films (primarily in the second one, though the first one wasted opportunities to lend gravitas to The Lizard), but Emma Stone as Gwen Stacy may be the biggest waste. She and Andrew Garfield had good chemistry, but those romantic scenes in the second one, while sporadically engaging, were bogged down by plodding repetition.

Editorial: What Do You Do With A Problem Like Spider-Man?

Hey guys, remember that Spider-Man movie that came out a few years back? The one with the corny dialogue, the performance from Jamie Foxx that was god-awful? The one that made me yearn for the days of emo-Peter? Yeah, that thing happened. What year did that come out? 2012, right? Wait....this year??? TWO MONTHS AGO??? Huh. I forgot all about it. And I'm sure many moviegoers have too.

The List!!!: Five Classic Reboots

In The List!!!, I do a list that just reeks of being click-bait, analyzing a particular topic or subject that pertains to something major occurring in pop-culture. This week, in honor of Dawn of The Planet of The Apes, a sequel to a reboot, I look at five classic reboots

In the internet community, the word reboot is as filthy as a towel used by Jabba The Hutt. Surely, all a reboot brings is the tarnishing of the original movies, while only serving as a cynical cash-grab. In reality, reboots vary in quality, but they hardly ever do damage to the beloved original movies (which must not have been that beloved if all it took to ruin its reputation was a poorly made reboot) and in fact, several reboots have turned out to be fantastic movies themselves. Here are five particular reboots that, in my opinion, aren't just good reboots, but great films.

The List!!!: Five Notable Fourth Movies

                                     
In The List!!!, I do a list that just reeks of being click-bait, analyzing a particular topic or subject that pertains to something major occurring in pop-culture. This week, in honor of a fourth Transformers movie being unleashed onto the world, I take a look at other notable movies that were the fourth entries in their respective franchises. Just a heads up; to be in this particular list, you have to be the fourth movie released in a franchise, not fourth chronologically.