Raise your hand if you’ve every fallen in love with a computer rather than a real person…

Yeah, me either. But apparently Joaquin Phoenix does that in Her, a film which looks extremely strange to me. Scarlett Johansson provides the voice for this Operating System with which Phoenix’s character falls in love, and the film also features Amy Adams and Rooney Mara.

As far as I can tell, this film is taking its concept of a man falling in love with an Operating System quite seriously. Again, as far as I can tell, it’s being posed as a real love story — which is just weird. But, you know, maybe…

Can you believe it? Yet another franchise sequel has been set for the summer of 2015. This time it’s the as-yet-untitled fifth Bourne film, directed by Justin Lin and starring Jeremy Renner. Universal also dated Luc Besson‘s thriller, Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson as a trained killer; read more about both below.

At this point it seems like completely suicide to schedule pretty much any film, much less a completely questionable one any time in 2015. I mean it’s getting pretty crowded over there. And I’ll tell you what too, I can’t wait to not see this film. The first installment in the…

In a recent interview with MTV, Abrams talks frankly about withholding the Khan reveal (he went as far as complete and outright denial):

The truth is I think it probably would have been smarter just to say upfront ‘This is who it is.’ It was only trying to preserve the fun of it, and it might have given more time to acclimate and accept that’s what the thing was.

The truth is because it was so important to the studio that we not angle this thing for existing fans. If we said it was Khan, it would feel like you’ve really got to know what Star Trek is about to see this movie. That would have…

What if one night out of every year, the authorities declared all criminal activity completely legal? What would you do? Steal the car you’ve always wanted but never could afford? Plot the death of your boss because he’s such a royal pain to work with?

In a futuristic America beleaguered by crime and overcrowded prisons, the government has sanctioned just such a night — an annual 12-hour period in which any person may commit any crime (including murder) without fear of retribution. Hospitals are shut down. Rule of law is suspended. This night of nights, you are allowed — nay, encouraged — to…

A Hindu group has called on ABC to apologize following an episode of Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. that suggested the god Vishnu, like the hero Thor, might be an alien.

In the Nov. 19 episode, which tied into the events of Thor: The Dark World, Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and hacker Skye (Chloe Bennett) have an exchange designed to deliver exposition about the Asgardians, who in the Marvel Universe are ancient aliens who were mistaken for gods when they visited Earth thousands of years ago. “Do you think other deities are aliens, too?” Skye asks. “Vishnu for sure, right?”

Could you…

I’m not going to try to pretend that I think there’s even the remotest possibility that this film will stay true to the Biblical narrative, or even that those making this film believe it’s anything more than a fanciful fairytale of a story. Indeed, every other film site/blog that has had anything to say about this upcoming film has made it pretty clear that the story is based on the Biblical “myth” of a great flood. But I do think there’s the slightest possibility that this film might be fun (I’m not holding my breath).

I did figure out one thing from the previous trailer and the scene where…

Blazing at the box office, “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” shot out the other tributes and made a whopping $74.5 million this weekend, part of an even more eye-popping $110.1 million for the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend (shattering the $82.4 million record set by “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”). 

Entering its second week, ‘Catching Fire’ has a domestic running total of $296.5 million and a worldwide total of $573 million (beating out the domestic $269.3 million and the worldwide $384.3 million of its predecessor “The Hunger Games” in its second week). Whereas last…

So you’re lounging around after Thanksgiving, wondering how on earth you could have eaten so much, and you want to do something that does not require a lot of energy. Well thankfully, that’s what movie theaters are for! So let’s see what you might want to see this weekend!

New This Weekend

Frozen — PG

This doesn’t look like something I’m personally all that interested in — but then, I’m known to be a little bit cranky about goofy looking films every now and then. I try not to be but I can’t help it. I mean, honestly this thing just looks too stupid. But you and/or your kids might enjoy…

I love these sorts of things, especially for films that were as good as Thor: The Dark World. And I always love seeing/hearing about those things that we think are probably digital, but are actually practical effects. Obviously a film like Thor: The Dark World is going to have a lot of digital stuff going on but I’m a firm believer that the more actual, real practical effects and real things we can have on film, the better the film will be. Yes, we’re getting to the point where we can digitally recreate people, but even so we can’t quite make them look real yet. I have no doubt that we’ll get…