Nat Turner Rises in New Trailer for 'The Birth of a Nation'

Nate Parker's Oscar contender is out with a new trailer today, one that gives you much more of the story and heavily emphasizes the religious roots behind Nat Turner's slave rebellion in the 1800's. This is expected to be a major awards player already, but the initial reaction to it in Sundance was very positive, so I expect it to get good reviews when it comes out in October as well.

Shia LeBeouf in the Cannes hit 'American Honey'

It's probably a stretch to call this a "hit," as it actually got mixed reception in Cannes. The reaction was apparently very divisive, with some critics loving it and others hating it. It's a three hour epic about lost youth and from this trailer I can tell it's going to have a lot of montages of partying, drug use, etc. One of those. The director is Andrea Arnold though, who made one of my favorite films of the last decade, Fish Tank, so there may some good stuff mixed in there with the overindulgent.

New Look at Tim Burton's 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children'

Another trailer for this movie continues to make it look like X-Men for babies, but who knows- maybe Burton's got one more good movie in him somewhere. I still get the feeling that whatever might be interesting about this will be blocked out by some kind of haphazard, explosion-and-fight scene at the end of it though. It's a common problem in Burton's filmography, even with his good ones. I see hints of that in this trailer.

Anton Yelchin 1989-2016

Some horribly tragic news today, as 27-year-old actor Anton Yelchin was found dead this morning, after apparently being pinned between his own car, a mailbox pillar and a security fence in his driveway. The police are describing it as a freak accident, as the car seems to have rolled down the driveway and onto Yelchin after he had gotten out of it briefly. Anton Yelchin was probably best known for the recent Star Trek films, where he had taken over the role of Chekhov from original series actor Walter Koenig. But he also had a long resume of other films in his too short career, including Terminator Salvation, Fright Night, Charlie Bartlett, Like Crazy, and Only Lovers Left Alive. He co-stars for the final time as Chekhov in the upcoming Star Trek Beyond, which is being released just next month.

First Teaser for Disney's 'Moana'

I don't know why Disney always tries to hide the fact that their musicals are actually, you know, musicals. Obviously Frozen's success shows the audience for this kind of thing is enormous, right? Now we have our first Hawaiian princess to add to the Disney princess line, but you can't really tell a whole lot from this teaser yet. Hopefully it's good, but for my money, Zootopia was so unexpectedly great this year that I'm betting this one will turn out to be the lesser Disney movie of 2016. It's from the directing team that has classics The Little Mermaid and Aladdin under their belt, but also not so great ones like Treasure Planet and Princess and the Frog. So, who knows.