Tom Hanks Plays Mr. Rogers in 'A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood'

With all the interest in Mr. Rogers inspired by the documentary Will You Be My Neighbor? (which was shockingly snubbed for the Oscar nomination last year), this movie may turn out to be a hit later this fall. It’s directed by Marielle Heller, who got nominations last year for Melissa McCarthy, Richard E. Grant and her screenplay for Can You Ever Forgive Me? I think this looks like it could be good, but Tom Hanks is still mostly Tom Hanks to me- he’s not really the kind of guy who can make himself disappear into a famous person, especially one as distinctive as Fred Rogers was. This would have called for a character actor who’s not so distinctively famous himself. That doesn’t mean he won’t be good, just not, you know, Mr. Rogers.

Tom Hooper Brings 'Cats' From Stage to Screen

Oh boy. Have you ever seen anything more horrifying than this trailer? Who really thought it was a good idea to put Cats on the big screen, and in realistically rendered human/CGI hybrid form at that? Damn, this looks bad. And coming from Tom Hooper, the guy who did Les Mis, that really gives me less than zero faith that this could possibly be good. The creepy cat people are too distracting to even pay attention to anything else that might be happening.

Jay and Silent Bob are Back in Kevin Smith's 'Jay and Silent Bob Reboot'

By the way, we’re being bombarded with trailers today because Comic-Con started, so that explains the deluge of stuff (as you can see, mostly remakes and sequels) we’ll be seeing for the next few days. This could be amusing, but it has been a while since Kevin Smith did a good movie, right? So who knows. For what it’s worth, Smith did endorse it as “the same fucking movie all over again,” so presumably if you liked the first one…(it had its moments).

Mysterious Look at Sundance Thriller 'Monos'

This Colombian film won the World Cinema Special Jury Award at Sundance and is being released in September by Neon. When studios cut trailers for foreign-language films, they either go ahead with the subtitles or cut together a bunch of scenes without dialogue. I prefer the former, this is one of the latter, but it has an effective, haunting feel to it nonetheless. Keep an eye out for this one.

Tom Cruise Returns as Maverick in New 'Top Gun' Sequel

Yeah, you read that right. They should start resurrecting his other old movies, see what happened to the guys from Risky Business, Cocktail, Color of Money. How about Jerry Maguire next? I would not be surprised if it happened. The original Top Gun is a really cheesy movie by the way. It dated very quickly, so this sequel isn’t really aimed at me. Not sure if there are a whole lot of die hard Top Gun fans out there waiting for this either, but I guess we’ll find out.

Brad Pitt Searches for His Father in New 'Ad Astra' Trailer

This looks interesting, but I already said I’m wary of James Gray as a director, so I'm waiting for reviews on this one. I’m also not sure about that release date- normally if studios think an adult driven drama like this is particularly good, they’ll release it in October or November for awards season. September, not so much. That’s usually reserved for movies they don’t think are quite good enough.

Judy Garland Brought Back to Life by Renee Zellweger

As good an actress as Renee Zellweger can be, I just can’t stop thinking about how little she resembles Judy Garland in any way here. She doesn’t look like her, she doesn’t sound like her, she doesn’t sing like her. Even though actors have given critically acclaimed performances as famous people before without really imitating them (Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe for example) that’s going to be too distracting for me here, I think.

Disney's Live-Action 'Mulan' Gets a Teaser

So, this trailer make Mulan look like it might not be a carbon copy of the cartoon, which means it has potential to actually be good. Even though you can hear the strains of “Reflection” in there, apparently this is not a musical, there’s no Mushu and no Shang, so it will be fairly different. That’s a good thing. They could do the same with properties like Hercules, Tarzan and The Hunchback of Notre Dame from their 90’s canon if they wanted to- maybe since those later ones are less culturally beloved than the big four (Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Lion King), they might actually deviate from them and turn out better movies?

Franco Zeffirelli 1923-2019

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Franco Zeffirelli died today at the age of 96. An Italian director best known for his Shakespearean adaptations like 1967’s The Taming of the Shrew and 1968’s Romeo and Juliet (which was nominated for four Oscars, including Picture and Director), he made films steadily from the late 60’s through the 90’s. Other notable entries in his filmography included The Champ (1979), Endless Love (1981), La Traviata (1983), Hamlet (1990), Jane Eyre (1996) and Tea With Mussolini (1999). He also directed the beloved 1977 miniseries Jesus of Nazareth, which became a huge success and is still a holiday mainstay on television. My favorite film of his is undoubtedly Romeo and Juliet, by far the best version of the play ever filmed, and the definitive one in my eyes.

1968 Trailer for Romeo and Juliet: