We’ve got a couple of new films here to choose from, one possible good option, one that doesn’t look great to me but I really just don’t care for the genre, and one that is in limited release.

New This Week

Carrie — R

This is apparently a remake of an older film of the same name from 1976. In any event the film holds no interest for me. But apparently Chad is going to see it (actually I think he saw it last night) and will be able to give a report to us on next week’s episode of The MovieByte Podcast.

A reimagining of the classic horror tale about Carrie White (Chloë Grace Moretz), a…

A little bit of follow up on ‘Gravity’: a reporter asked Alfonso Cuaron if filming in space was difficult… yeah, really. Turns out it was something of a joke for the comedic news outlet. Still, pretty funny because apparently Cuaron answered as if it were a real question. In other news, Hans Zimmer is talking about *not* scoring ‘Man of Steel 2’ (or Superman Vs. Batman if you prefer). TJ and Chad have differing opinions on the merits of the first ‘Man of Steel’ film’s score so that leads to some interesting conversation. Madonna was banned from the Alamo Drafthouse for texting during a film and then screamed at the other patrons when asked to stop. Bravo, Drafthouse! TJ is thinking he needs one of those in Nashville! This week’s main topic and big review focus is ‘Captain Phillips’ — another outsanding entry into this year’s cinematic run down and TJ and Chad sure think it ought to be an Oscar contender, even with the news that it may not be as entirely accurate to the real life story as we might have hoped.

Pacific Rim 2 exists on a hard drive in Hollywood. For some time now, screenwriter Travis Beacham has been writing a sequel to this summer’s Pacific Rim with the knowledge it might never get made. Guillermo del Toro’s film recently squeaked by to $100 million in the United States, but grossed three times that internationally, earning record numbers in China. Those numbers made the sequel a bit more likely but there has yet to be any official movement on it.

In a new interview, del Toro confirms he and Beacham are continuing to write the film with the hope Legendary will give them a green…

Alright, let’s go over this score, shall we? Liam Neeson trained Obi-Wan, he was Ra’s al Ghul who nearly defeated Batman (!!!), he’s Aslan, Zeus, and Bryan Mills from Taken where he did a lot of killing and getting back at people. Who’s stupid enough to hijack this guy’s plane?

Joking aside though, I’m a sucker for this sort of thing and I think it’s just the sort of film I’ll like prett well. I don’t expect to be anything fancy or “best film of all time” or anything like that. But I’ll bet it will be decent, and to some extent, that’s all I’m looking for.

Aside from Liam Neeson, the film…

This one is looking mighty good to me. I’m so ready for more good films. Captain Phillips and Gravity have spoiled me now and I want all my films to be good for the rest of the year (we’ve really had a bummer of a summer as far as I’m concerned, or at least it sure seems that way).

In this new clip from the upcoming film, things get a little bit intense with a crowd of black folks, while the white soldiers train guns on them. Eventually, one fires into the crowd, several more shots are fired. And then we see Idris Elba burning what is apparently his papers of citizenship? I’m given to…

Oh, hey there. While we’re anxiously waiting for JJ Abrams to decend upon us with the goodness that we presume he will bestow upon us through the next entry into the Star Wars franchise, the official Star Wars YouTube account has given us a little bit of a goody by way of the original trailer for The Empire Strikes Back — by far my favorite Star Wars film to date. But I’ll tell you, man were the trailers bad back in those days. I mean the trailer is just awful. If I were to see anything remotely like this trailer now, I would stay very far away from this film. My how times change.

Check it…

Briefly: Christopher Cantwell and Christopher C. Rodgers, writers of the upcoming AMC series Halt & Catch Fire, have written a new action-thriller script that now has Oblivionand Tron Legacy director Joseph Kosinski set to direct. In fact, Kosinski came up with the story, and then had the screenwriting pair flesh out the script. (Similar to the manner in which Oblivion was developed.)

Providing the money will be Media Rights Capital, the same outfit that financed Elysium and that has been backing some of David Fincher’s recent work, among many other projects.

I’m keeping my eyes open for…

Now the cat is partially out of the bag about Marvel’s next plan for television. (Is this phase two, or the second half of phase one?) The company has several new shows in development, and while we don’t know much about any one of them, we’ll pass along the first info below. Hint: these probably won’t be on ABC.

There’s so little info on the new projects that we’ll just quote straight from Deadline: “Marvel is quietly putting together a package of four drama series and a miniseries — a total of some 60 episodes — that would be taken out to the VOD and cable space, with Netflix, Amazon and…

I am really not liking the look of this. This is not the Jack Ryan we might remember. This is a retconned version. This looks more like a cousin to the Jason Bourne films than anything — which really just irritates me more than anything else. Jack Ryan was never a superstar hero. But, whatever. I’m sure I’ll watch it and even enjoy it on some level. But some part of me will be sad. This is not the film I thought we would get.

Here’s the summary:

The story follows him from 9/11, through his tour of duty in Afghanistan, which scarred him forever, and into his early days in the Financial…