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"Get busy living, or get busy dying."
With his velvety smooth voice, wise eyes and confident, reassuring demeanor, Morgan Freeman has become one of the most popular and respected actors working today, imbuing any movie he appears in with class and gravitas. Freeman struggled to find steady work as an actor for decades before his breakout performance in the 1987 movie Street Smart earned him an Academy Award nomination, but he has appeared in one or more movies every year since then, save for 1999. This year will be one of his most prolific yet, with major roles in four movies — Oblivion, Now You See Me, Olympus Has Fallen and Last Vegas. In his career, he's played a pimp, a principal, a prisoner, a president, a procurer of Bat-gadgets and even God, but what is his best movie role? Help us rank the movies of Morgan Freeman.
Rate the Top 10 Best Morgan Freeman Movies >>
Posted 03.18.13 by BrentJS -
"Never send a human to do a machine's job."
When Star Wars (now titled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) debuted in May of 1977, it forever changed sci-fi — and Hollywood’s perception of the genre — with its epic fantasy story and groundbreaking technology. It quickly became the highest grossing movie of all time and garnered numerous accolades, winning six of the ten Academy Awards categories for which it was nominated. Star Wars continually ranks near the top of just about every movie list category out there, including our own recent Best Sci-Fi Movies of the 1970’s and ‘80s, as voted by you, the Reelz.com readers.
The long-awaited prequel trilogy that was launched in May of 1999 with Star Wars: The Phantom Menace was a huge success for Lucasfilm, but, even though it boasted far superior special effects, it failed to make the same sort of impact on moviegoers as the original. Was Jar Jar Binks really the source of the ambivalence that many fans felt toward The Phantom Menace or was it that they had already had their minds blown by The Matrix, which opened two months prior? And how do the Star Wars prequels and The Matrix trilogy stack up against other sci-fi movies with next-level special effects like Avatar or more cerebral movies like Donnie Darko? Sit down, jack in and upload your choices of the best sci-fi movies from 1990 to today.
Rate the Top 10 Best Sci-Fi Movies (1990s - 2010s) >>
Posted 03.14.13 by BrentJS -
"I take no pleasure in taking a life if it's from a person who doesn't care about it."
Though we may never get to see Gary Oldman play Commissioner Gordon again now that Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has ended — that is, unless the recent rumor that Warner Bros. is planning to use the Justice League movie as "a vehicle for Christian Bale to reprise his role as Batman" is true, in which case a cameo by Gotham’s top cop wouldn’t be out of the question — we will get to see him play a former police commissioner in Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, the sequel to Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Add his stint as Sirius Black in the Harry Potter movies and his recently completed work as Norton in MGM's Robocop remake and that makes four major tentpole franchises for Oldman.
Long before Oldman became a staple of summer popcorn movies, he had already developed a strong cult following for playing deliciously dark (Count Dracula in Bram Stoker's Dracula), terrifyingly sadistic (Warden Glenn in Murder in the First) and mesmerizingly maniacal (Norman Stansfield in Léon: The Professional) villains. The man once dubbed "psycho deluxe" for his over-the-top bad guy roles plays the hero more often than not these days, but when he funnels the same energy and intensity into quieter performances they simmer, as in his Oscar-winning role as disgraced spy George Smiley in Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. Punk rocker, vampire, drug dealer, corrupt cop, good cop, shapeshifting wizard, spy — Oldman masterfully played each character with zeal, but which roles were his best?
Rate the Top 10 Best Gary Oldman Movies >>
Posted 03.12.13 by BrentJS -
Batman is no more.
Much to the chagrin of fanboys everywhere, The Dark Knight Rises closed out director Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy last year, leaving the Caped Crusader's cinematic future in limbo, even if the character's return is inevitable. Yet, as each engrossing chapter of Nolan's trilogy was released, the mania and fervor from fans wasn't the only thing to grow, as the director was also able to increase the movies' running time, with each installment being slightly longer than its predecessor. With that in mind, it seems impossible that the entire trilogy would be able to fit into a three minute running time, yet that's just what the guys at ScreenRant have been able to accomplish, taking Batman Begins, The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and rolling them into a concise, three-minute video that summarizes the entire trilogy.
watch the video >> Posted 01.16.13 by Ryan -
Though the cameras stopped rolling on The Dark Knight Rises months ago, Christopher Nolan is still "working" on the movie to some extent, as he continues to travel the world to promote it. He recently said in an Empire podcast interview that he's "relieved" that the movie is done and in theaters, but he won't get the feeling that it's truly "finished" until it "has been out for a couple months" and moviegoers "have really had a chance to tell me what it is."
As far as saying his good-byes to Batman and the franchise he helped to revitalize for Warner Bros., Nolan has already done that. Nolan wrote the foreward to The Art and Making of the Dark Knight Trilogy book that serves as an eloquent, heartfelt and even somewhat humorous farewell letter to the characters that populated his trilogy and the actors who played them. Nolan writes, "I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental."
read Nolan's farewell letter >> Posted 07.27.12 by BrentJS -
Now that Marvel Studios' The Avengers has kicked The Dark Knight down a couple notches in box office rankings — besting the Bat for the top spot for midnight screenings with a take of $18.7 million and pushing The Dark Knight down to third place in highest-opening weekends — it would be understandable (if a little tacky) for Marvel Studios President of Production (and mastermind of the Marvel Cinematic Universe) Kevin Feige to crow about the accomplishment. But we're pretty sure he won't. Just a couple days before the theatrical opening of The Avengers in the States, Feige actually went out of his way to praise Christopher Nolan's revamp of the Batman franchise, calling it "the greatest thing that happened" to superhero movies because it "bolstered everything."
Before Nolan needed to save Batman from the creative black hole that the franchise plunged into when Joel Schumacher decided to introduce Bat-nipples and enough neon to make the Las Vegas Strip look classy, Tim Burton was considered the wunderkind of comic book movies. With Batman and its follow-up, Batman Returns, Burton helped to turn Batman into a cultural phenomenon (not many grown men would have been caught dead wearing Bat-symbol T-shirts in public before the movie) and made comic book movies a force to be reckoned with in Hollywood. So what does Burton think of Nolan's Batman movies? If he appreciates them as much as Feige does, he's not saying. However, he does appear to be thankful that Nolan's Batman movies make his own Batman movies appear less "dark" by comparison.
what did burton & Pfeiffer say and what's this about a Whedon Batman? >> Posted 05.07.12 by BrentJS -
For every movie that makes it to the big screen, countless more fall into "Development Hell," never to see the light of day. What would the Batman franchise look like today if Warner Bros. had decided to hand the keys to the Bat-mobile to Darren Aronofsky (Black Swan) instead of Christopher Nolan?
Sit back, grab a handful of popcorn, and prepare to have your mind blown as we journey to Development Hell in the latest installment of our look at David Hughes’ Tales from Development Hell: The Greatest Movies Never Made?
Read Part 2: Fall and Rise of The Dark Knight >>
Posted 03.09.12 by BrentJS -
Warner Bros. has released a new teaser poster for director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, as anticipation is rising (ahem) over the extended prologue to the movie that will accompany the release of Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol on Dec. 16th in select 70mm IMAX prints.
Earlier this week, several outlets were shown the seven-minute prologue, which centers on villain Bane (Tom Hardy, just like the poster, which claims "the Legend Ends" and depicts Bane walking away from Batman's cowl. Reportedly, the prologue takes place mostly in an airplane, and features Aidan Gillen (The Wire, Game of Thrones) in an unspecified role. After the screening of the prologue, Nolan told EW that he was excited for the public to see the footage.
I am excited about it. I’m only nervous about it in that the rest of the film isn’t finished yet, so we’re still in the evolving creative process. I wouldn’t want the reactions to skew that. We try to work in a vacuum a little bit. It’s always different in the editing room. There’s a lot of discovery and a long process of rediscovery.
read nolan's comment and see the full poster >> Posted 12.10.11 by Ryan -
We've been getting a taste of the violence and mayhem that director Christopher Nolan has in store for us in his third and final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, thanks to "spy" pics and videos captured by the scores of amateur photographers and paparazzi who have swarmed the Pittsburgh sets of the movie in recent weeks. Don't get us wrong, we like our Batman grim and gritty and we love what we see of The Dark Knight Rises so far, but we also feel it's all getting a little too, well, dark already. Which is why we get a kick out of this video trailer edited by ScreenRant's Mike Eisenberg, which takes footage from Batman Begins and The Dark Knight and remixes it to make Nolan's movies look like a romantic comedy where Bruce Wayne's (Christian Bale) enemies are not criminals, but the men who stand between him and his two Rachels (Katie Holmes and Maggie Gyllenhaal).
read the synopsis & watch the rom-com Batman trailer >> Posted 08.05.11 by BrentJS -
Pittsburgh is getting notice for something other than the Steelers football team now that Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises has begun filming there. "Steel City" is the new stand-in for Batman's (Christian Bale) fictional home of Gotham City — replacing Chicago, where Nolan filmed the majority of the Gotham scenes in Batman Begins and The Dark Knight— and some spectacular "spy" pics and video have been coming from the plethora of amateur photographers and paparazzi swarming the sets.
Recently, laser beams have been spotted shooting through the air over downtown Pittsburgh, illuminating a large Bat logo on the 31-story Highmark Building. Many early commenters on the symbol speculated that it was the part of the shoot, perhaps the new Bat-signal — Commissioner Gordon (Gary Oldman) destroyed the old-fashioned spotlight Bat-signal in the last movie — but it's more likely than not simply Pittsburgh's way of welcoming the production to the city.
see Blackgate Prison explode in video from the set >> Posted 08.03.11 by BrentJS