Brimming with edge-of-your-seat suspense, 10 Cloverfield Lane is a wonderfully effective throwback to classic nail-biters and a terrific expansion of the Cloverfield cinematic universe.

The film opens with a woman named Michelle (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) walking out on her boyfriend (the voice of Bradley Cooper) after a fight. As she drives away down an isolated country road, she hears a radio broadcast about mysterious blackouts across the southern coast of the United States and WHAM — her car is blindsided, and the movie intercuts its title card with chaotic footage of her accident in progress. Michelle wakes up in an underground bunker, where an intimidatingly large man named Howard (John Goodman) explains that he brought her there to save her life. He claims there’s been a mysterious attack on the surface that contaminated the air and killed everyone outside, meaning that the current occupants of the bunker — he, Michelle, and a guy named Emmett (John Gallagher Jr.) — are the only people left alive. But when Michelle, who understandably doubts this explanation, questions who’s responsible for the attack, Howard says he suspects the Russians or — get this — maybe even the Martians as the culprits. As you might expect from a guy who spent years building an elaborate underground bunker in case of an apocalypse, Howard isn’t exactly stable: he’s socially awkward, has some severe daughter issues, and a nasty temper. So, confined to a relatively small area and with Howard always only steps away, Michelle makes plans to escape and discover the truth about what’s really going on.

I read the movie as an exploration of fatherhood; as much as fathers might try to protect their daughters by keeping them cooped up, eventually they’ll have to face the outside world. There’s a lot to dig into about Howard wanting and thinking he deserves respect and admiration for what he’s done, and him trying to recreate a family dynamic in these questionable circumstances. I can’t wait to go back and watch it again to dive further into this film’s themes.

Comparisons to Misery feel inevitable, but Goodman’s nuanced performance never gets as theatrical as Kathy Bates’ when she played a captor in that 1990 film. Goodman is next-level incredible here, playing a character unlike anything he’s ever done before. His physical size is certainly imposing, but he’s not just a one-note monster: he plays Howard almost as if he’s autistic, eyes constantly shifting around, and with the temperament of a wounded animal. We’re clearly meant to experience the movie through Michelle’s perspective, and since she’s a captive, we’re instantly distrustful of Howard, but he still manages to give the character enough humanity that, despite his actions, we eventually come to sympathize with him. Winstead has been doing great work for years, but this is one of her best roles, and certainly the one with the most potential for breakout success. She’s fantastic, giving Michelle strength and determination that makes her about as far from a damsel-in-distress as you can get. Gallagher, too, is always reliable for a solid performance, and though Emmett doesn’t have much to do, the actor brings a lot to the role anyway. He and Winstead both get satisfying, honest-to-God character arcs in this movie, too, which is often one of the first things to go out the window in today’s blockbuster movies.

First-time director Dan Trachtenberg does a terrific job shifting our allegiances throughout the story, slowly revealing more information that paints a fuller picture of who these characters are. He famously earned his shot at the big time directing Portal: No Escape, a fan film that went viral a few years ago, and this is a big step up from that and a hell of an impressive feature directorial debut. He works wonders with this film’s contained contained setting, expertly building and releasing tension as the film builds to its go-for-broke conclusion.

My first thought was that the single location would make it difficult to draw connections between this and the original Cloverfield, but without giving anything away, the jaw-dropping final act adds far more to the mythology than the 2008 film did. There are a couple of small connections that fans will be pleased with — a Kelvin gas station here, a Slusho! sign there — but I’ll save the discussion of the bigger connections for a more spoilery article later on. I feel like a majority of movies have a decent hook but often fail to stick the landing; 10 Cloverfield Lane is one of the rare films that delivers an ending that lives up to its premise and left me desperately wanting to talk about it as soon as I left the theater.

How about we start the day off with a new promo trailer for Marvel's Daredevil season two! The trailer features Daredevil, The Punisher, and Elektra. It shows them suited up and ready for action. At the same time, they are narrating their own personal mottos. This is what they say:

Daredevil: "If I take a night off, people get hurt."

Elektra: "If you don't get what you want by day, you take it by force at night."

Punisher: "I believe that this world needs men that are willing to make the hard call."

Daredevil season two debuts on Netflix on March 18th. I'm so glad that I don't have to wait much longer before I get to watch this second season.

An ancient evil is coming. Time to suit up. #Daredevilhttps://t.co/aWko3BLbEi

— Netflix ANZ (@NetflixANZ) March 9, 2016

10 Cloverfield Lane is the directorial debut of Dan Trachtenberg, who you may remember directed a short film called Portal: No Escape that went viral a few years ago. Along with directing a few shorts and commercials, Dan was also one of the co-hosts of The Totally Rad Show, a popular video show that ran for years on Revision3. The Portal short got a lot of recognition and allowed him the edge he needed to make his feature directorial debut with J.J. Abrams' Bad Robot Productions, and he knocked it out of the park with this movie.

I spoke with the director on the phone earlier this week about fan misconceptions, his influences making this movie, the timeline of how this became a Cloverfield movie, and much more. I'm splitting the interview into two parts: this one is spoiler-free, and the second half (which will go live on Monday after everyone has had a chance to see the film in theaters this weekend) will dive a little deeper into some spoilery territory. Here's part one.

GeekTyrant: You spent years reviewing movies on the internet before this, so I feel like you’re uniquely qualified to answer this question: after directing this movie, what is the biggest misconception entertainment writers (and maybe even fans) have about directing a movie today?

Dan Trachtenberg: It's interesting...I should have a great answer for this. I was always directing — just not movies — when I was on that show, so it never felt as mysterious as to what the job is, what it entails. I'm sure I have a great answer. What is a conception that people might have? What do you think would be a conception?

(Laughs) I just feel like there's a lot of internet group-think, and maybe there's a lot of simplification, like "Oh, it's easy to go direct this," or "That director's doing this for this reason."

I will say that there are so many assumptions made. I've always found that frustrating, and now even moreso that I'm specifically on the other end of it, of "Oh, they clearly just did this" or "They clearly were thinking that." If you put that in print, there's something about reading something in Helvetica that makes it seem truthier, when it's really just an opinion. Someone's opining something and that takes on this degree of fact even though it couldn't be less so. People really love to assume the intentions of a filmmaker before even researching it on their own, and it was always incredibly frustrating to read that. Now being on the other end of it, it's even more transparent and annoying. I know that's a vague answer.

I thought you did a great job slowly revealing information that changed our sympathies for certain characters. Can you talk about that?

That was hugely important because it is a suspense movie, but it's all told from one character's POV. The thing we all know about building suspense is it's all about a hierarchy of knowledge. It's all about when the audience might know something that the main character doesn't, or the main character knows something that the audience doesn't and the push-pull of that which becomes specifically challenging when you can never cut to a scene that's outside the main character's perspective. A lot of that came through the ways information was doled out to her, and, via her, us.

I went to great lengths to really make the movie feel as subjective as possible. Something that was really cool about that original Cloverfield movie was that it had that first person perspective that really felt experiential. Even taking inspiration from video games, there are a lot of these really great third person action adventure games that still feel — even though you're looking at the character model — they still make you feel everything that the character is feeling in the same way that a first person shooter could more directly. Making this movie in a more classical traditional fashion, taking inspiration from how video games do it, I really wanted to make it feel as experiential. A lot of that comes through in several long takes throughout the movie so you get to experience things in real time. And then just in the different ways that the camera is sometimes still. Sometimes characters are pressed to the outer edges of frames and then get pressed together, and sometimes the camera starts to really move and either uses more old-school classic suspense film cinematography camerawork so it feels like it's of that vocabulary, and then sometimes it's just really visceral and hand-held. It really was just using all of the different techniques to create the tension and pressure.

If I had to crudely boil it down, I’d say this film reminded me a bit of Misery with a sci-fi twist. What movies influenced you directorially here? Were there any particular touchstones for you?

Certainly Misery and Dead Calm are, plot-wise, direct correlations. But there's also an element of this movie that was really hard to find a comparison with. I looked a lot at Rosemary's Baby, which is also a movie that's largely told through one character's POV and yet is still quite tense. We looked at some old David Fincher stuff. Se7en was one we looked at quite a bit because it's also so well crafted, but I always found the filmmaking to be invisibly clever and I wanted a similar thing for this movie. I looked at a lot of sub movies: The Hunt for Red October and Crimson Tide. Sub movies are very contained, but they always feel really big as well, and exciting. That's something we wanted, and we looked a lot at the camerawork in those movies as well as the production design. Die Hard certainly is an influence for me, Raiders of the Lost Ark is a huge influence, all of Spielberg's stuff — Empire of the Sun, Always — I love his filmmaking and blocking. So I really drew on everything. I'm a real nerd for movies, as you know, so it was fun to finally put it all out there.

If you can, I’d like you to briefly walk me through the timeline. When did this go from Valencia or The Cellar (the project's original working titles) to a Cloverfield movie?

Bad Robot acquired this spec script called The Cellar a few years ago. Then J.J., his producers, and Damien Chazelle developed that into this thing that could fit into the Cloververse, and that was the script that was sent to me. That script was very much the movie that we see here today. We didn't have the title quite yet, but all of its trappings were still there. When J.J. opined, "What if we call it 10 Cloverfield Lane?" it was so genius because even that name, it sounds like an episode of The Twilight Zone, and this movie is very much a giant Twilight Zone episode.

That's interesting. This is exactly what we were talking about earlier about reading something in Helvetica and having this sort of authoritative voice behind it, because I was under the impression that it was transformed into a Cloverfield movie sometime during production. But that's not the case? You knew it was going to be a Cloverfield movie before you even started shooting?

Its DNA was there the first time when I read the script. All of the main beats — more than that — really the movie, from the first act to the third act, what I read, was the same shape as what you saw.

How did you feel when you found out that this project was going to be part of a larger cinematic world, and all of the baggage and expectations that come with that? Take me through your headspace when you realized that.

It can certainly be overwhelming, but I knew that all I had control over is making this movie as good as it possibly could be, and everything else would be out of my grasp. I just tried my damndest to make this movie as awesome as possible. I definitely didn't realize [how big] the fervor of that Cloverfield fanbase was, but had renewed vigor once they started to put wind in the sails of the movie. I've been so excited about that, and I love going on the subreddit and all of those things are super cool. But all of the outside stuff surrounding the movie can get very overwhelming very quickly, so I really just tried to focus on making the movie rad.

10 Cloverfield Lane hits theaters this Friday, March 11. Be sure to head back here on Monday, March 14 for part two of this interview, which talks about Easter eggs, a possible sequel, and more.

We’ve heard time and time again that Captain America: Civil War is a Captain America-focused movie regardless of the all the other characters who have been crammed into it. To me, the movie seems like an Avengers 2.5 film, but to Robert Downey Jr., the film is a little Iron Man 4.

This will be Downey Jr.’s seventh appearance in a Marvel movie as Tony Stark, and in Civil War we are going to see a very different side of him than we’ve ever seen before. Speaking to USA Today the actor said:

"In a way it’s Cap 3 but for me it’s like my little Iron Man 4 and then it's back to the thing we all recognize. Everything pulls over to the side of the road when the thunder of an Avengers thing comes through because that’s how it is until it changes. If it changes."

He goes on to say that Tony Stark does not go full villain in this movie. He explained:

"If we’re going to go there, then we’ve got to save it for my swan song. I would still like to keep a general audience and mildly be in their favor somehow."

Whatever happens in Civil War is going to help set up for what we see in Avengers: Infinity War. Hopefully, Tony and Steve can work out their differences before big bad Thanos comes in to conquer the universe. Downey Jr. offered praise to what James Gunn did in Guardians of the Galaxy and how it affected what they were doing with the other Marvel films saying:

"Gunn spun everything in a whole other different way where it’s like, wow, without even trying to, that took a little bit of the real estate out of some tonal stuff we were doing so we don’t want to fight that. We want to give way to that. We want to yield to that kind of powerful dynamic that they created and just go, ‘Hey, that’s great. You know what, we’re going to widen the track here and we’re going to stay in this lane, and then we’ll see when it’s time to switch lanes again.'"

Captain America: Civil War comes out on May 6th, and I can’t wait to see where it leads these characters.

The creative gang over at How It Should Have Ended has released a new animated sketch that focuses on 20th Century Fox's Deadpool and offers an alternate ending in which Vanessa meets her demise after the antihero uses his "maximum effort!" to try and save her from the collapsing Helicarrier. The video also features a cameo from Captain America trying to keep Deadpool from using foul language. They must've had a lot of fun making this video, and I'm sure you're going to enjoy the fruit of their labor!

On a list of cool things you can download on the web for free, this should be on the top of the list! Geod Studios is working on an emulator that allows you to play NES games in a 3D environment! It's pretty cool, but definitely needs a lot of work! Some titles like Dr... View Full Post on GameTyrant

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A couple of years ago we learned that Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul was in talks to join the big screen adaptation of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower. The actor previously said that he had “a ton of meetings” when Ron Howard was still attached to direct to take on the role of Eddie Dean.

A lot has changed since then. The movie is now set up at Sony Pictures and is being directed by Nikolaj Arcel (The Royal Affair), and as of right now the film stars Idris Elba in the role of Roland and Matthew McConaughey as The Man in Black, who is the villain in the story.

We now have word from Blastr that Aaron Paul has actually been cast in the film. The site says the information came from someone inside the production and that they can confirm it. But still, we are going to treat it as a rumor.

It would be cool if the news is true, though! Paul fits the character of Eddie Dean perfectly. The character is introduced in the second book of the series, The Drawing of the Three. He is a smart-ass drug addict living in New York and was pulled to the world of The Dark Tower where he joined Roland on his quest to the Tower.

We recently learned that the first film will start in the middle of the story instead of at the beginning. The director said that the film takes place in our day, in the modern world, so they could be mixing elements from the first three books in the series, which should prove to be interesting.

Their goal is still to do three films and also have a TV series to connect the films to each other. The movie is set to be released on January 13th, 2017, and I can’t wait to see how it turns out! Hopefully this news of Paul being cast in the film is true. Here are a couple of reactions from the actor regarding the rumor that he posted on Twitter:

This is beautiful news. https://t.co/Ktf0SV8HIy

— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) March 9, 2016

@StephenKing I love you. Also, thanks for all of our kind words regarding BB in the past. I'm sure Dean filled you in on how much it meant.

— Aaron Paul (@aaronpaul_8) March 9, 2016

Just in case you didn’t get enough of Chris Hemsworth in the first domestic trailer for Paul Feig’s Ghostbusters reboot, here’s an international trailer with lots of new footage featuring Thor as a secretary. There’s also additional footage of the ghostbusting team crowd surfing and trying to bust ghosts.

It’s fun to see some new footage, but there are a lot of people out there that hated what they saw the first time around. If you didn't like the first trailer, I doubt you're going to be sold on the film by just seeing a little bit of new footage, but here it is in case you’re interested! 

Thirty years after the original film took the world by storm, Ghostbusters is back and fully rebooted for a new generation. Director Paul Feig combines all the paranormal fighting elements that made the original franchise so beloved with a cast of new characters, played by the funniest actors working today. Get ready to watch them save the world this summer!

The movie stars Melissa McCarthy as Abby Yates, Kate McKinnon as Jillian Holtzman, Kristen Wiig as Erin Gilbert, Leslie Jones as Patty Tolan, and Chris Hemsworth as their secretary. All of the original surviving Ghostbusters are confirmed to have cameos in the film as well. The movie will hit theaters on July 15th.

Artist Otis Frampton has added a third vol. to his ABCDEFGeek art series. He has created all new geek pop culture images to awesomely correspond with each letter of the alphabet. We already posted the first Vol. of the set, which you can check out here. He hasn't finished the full set of vol. 3 yet, so I filled in a few of the missing letters with vol. 2. If you want to see the second vol. of the series click here. Frampton is always come up with cool geeky art. I really dig his style and I'm always looking out for what he does next. 

We've got a few new promo materials to share with you from Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. Warner Bros. has released a new TV spot as well as a few behind-the-scenes photos of Zack Snyder directing certain actors in the film. You'll also find a new image of Lex Luthor above and a few previously seen shots from the film, but the ones I included in this post are high-resolution versions of those images. 

The closer we get to this movie actually opening in theaters, the more excited I am getting to see it. Even if, like me, you didn't like Man of Steel, it's hard not to be excited about seeing Batman and Superman locked in an epic battle with each other! The movie opens up on March 25th!

Sacha Baron Cohen is finally opening up about why his Freddie Mercury biopic fell apart. The actor tells Howard Stern that he and Queen had very different opinions on how the movie should progress. Cohen wanted to explore the personal life of Freddie and the wild lifestyle that he led. Queen wanted the movie to be about the band with Freddie dying midway through the movie, AND THE BAND FIGURING OUT HOW TO MOVE ON WITHOUT HIM!

Seriously wtf...who would watch that? As cool as it would've been to see Cohen play Freddie, I'm glad he stepped away after hearing that nonsense.

The CW has released a fun clip from the eighth episode of DC's Legends of Tomorrow. The clip includes a Smallville Easter egg and amusingly takes a shot at Hall H at San Diego Comic-Con.

The episode follows the heroes as they travel back in time to the 1950s to search for Vandal Savage. When they get there they find him posing as a doctor at a hospital under the name of Curtis Knox. Knox is the name of the villain in Smallville who was played by Dean Cain. He was an immortal doctor previously meant to be Vandal Savage, but the studio wouldn't let the Smallville producers use the name. 

As for the Hall H jab, while taking a tour of the hospital White Canary looks down a hallway and asks what is down there. She gets the following reply:

"Oh, that's Hall H, the restricted ward. It's for Dr. Knox's patients. Violent psychotics. That part of the tour is worth skipping."

Episode 8 is titled “Night of the Hawk,” and it's described as follows:

“The team tracks Savage (guest star Casper Crump) to a small town in Oregon during the 1950s. Upon arrival, they discover there have been a recent string of murders and they suspect Savage is involved. Professor Stein and Sara go undercover at a psychiatric hospital, where Savage is working as a doctor, to find out his plan. While there, Sara meets a nurse named Lindsay (guest star Ali Liebert) and sparks fly. Meanwhile, Ray and Kendra pretend to be a married couple to gain the neighborhood’s trust, but an interracial couple in the ’50s isn’t something that goes unnoticed. Soon, Savage is at their door.”

The episode is set to air on March 10th. 

Here's a crazy and weird mashup that I never thought I'd see! We have a set of character art created by Rage Gear Studios in which they transformed several X-Men superheroes into characters from classic '80s cartoon Rainbow Brite. The character mashups included here are Dazzle Bright, Lemon Lee, Mean Mean Tangerine, Roguey D/Mint, Scarlett O'Hex, Ice Blue, Psy Violet, Indigo Beau, Stormy, Remy Le Rose, and Moon Crawler. I never watched Rainbow Brite, but of course I'm familiar with it and it's fun to see the X-Men all decked out with ridiculous cuteness. 

Via: Geek x Girls

I remember the day. I remember the day I fired up Diablo for the first time on my old Windows 95 gaming box. I believe it was a Pentium 133mhz with 32 megs of RAM and a 400meg hard drive. I should fire it up because I've got it sitting right next to my 4K gaming rig, complete with the 17" CRT monitor I played that day...read more on Gametyrant

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Les Moonves is in a roundabout way confirmed we will get a season two of Supergirl! Deadline quotes the enigmatic CBS Head as saying:

“We have about five new shows on this year...of those five, I believe all five of them will be renewed, and we own four of them.”

There's a lot of trickiness to that statement, but to remove all that and just have the facts it looks like the five possible shows to be renewed will be Supergirl, Limitless, Code Black, Life In Pieces, Criminal Minds and the new Rush Hour series coming soon. Looking at ratings, it sounds like Supergirl is going to be the non-owned series coming back, but you never know! I'm sure the CW would gladly take another hero show if CBS isn't going to, but I doubt they'll do Greg Berlanti like that. I'll be honest I dipped after the 5th episode... does the show deserve a new season?

The final Mythbusters aired March 5th on Discovery. It's sad to say there will likely never be another show like it. The way the team tackled popular myths with science and managed to make a primetime television hit out of it is incredible, and if you never watched it, this supercut will make you want to! Fans of the show, did you see some of your favorite moments?

I had forgotten all about this, but about five years ago, Paramount, Universal, and MGM all tried to make a movie out of Where's Waldo?, the once-popular collection of illustrated children's books. If you lived under a rock in the '80s and '90s, the basic rundown involved artist Martin Handford creating images of crowded areas, and the reader had to identify Waldo, a guy who wore a distinctive red-and-white-striped shirt and beanie. Those earlier attempts stalled, but MGM still has the rights and now it sounds like Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are going to be the ones to crack the story and bring an adaptation to the big screen.

The Tracking Board reports that the duo will produce the new movie, and if you're like me, I'm sure a lot of you are wondering how the heck anyone is going to turn this into a movie. Earlier versions of the script involved Waldo accidentally triggering a time machine that sends him through the ages, leaving him on a quest to return to the woman he loves, but it's unclear if Rogen and Goldberg are going to write their own draft or just produce the film based on the existing screenplay.

If we're lucky, maybe it'll turn out to be something like this parody from all the way back in 2007:

Marvel's Captain America: Civil War looks to be a huge milestone in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and fans are rabidly anticipating the film's May release date. Marvel Studios is going to release the film's final trailer tomorrow, but in the meantime, they've teased that release with two new videos from the Facebook pages of Captain America and Iron Man that highlight the opposing "teams" in the upcoming battle of heroes.

Which side are you on? Make sure to head back here tomorrow to see the new trailer. Captain America: Civil War opens on May 6.

If you have a crappy, basically unusable laptop laying around, here's an awesome project for you! The Verge shows you how to turn your crappy computer into a high-end Chromebook using a flash drive and some software! The crazy part is your old computer is still likely more powerful than the current Chromebooks, since they're so stripped down. Watch the video and post your results in the comments!

Author Vince Flynn's popular series of Mitch Rapp novels is making the jump to the big screen, and will fittingly begin with an adaptation of American Assassin, the first book to introduce the character. Deadline reports that Oscar winning actor Michael Keaton has become the first person hired for the film, and he'll play a character named Stan Hurley, a Cold War vet who teaches Rapp how to fight terrorists. Here's how Deadline describes the plot:

The series will begin as Rapp is a black ops recruit who’s devastated by the loss of his fiancee to a terrorist attack. The CIA deputy director assigns the shadowy Hurley to train a grief-stricken but highly motivated Rapp how to thwart terrorist operations and hunt the perpetrators. As Rapp’s training progresses, the pair is dispatched on a joint mission with a lethal Turkish agent to stop a mysterious operative from starting World War III in the Middle East.

I went to Flynn's website to read the official book synopsis, but it felt a little too spoilery to reproduce here, so you can check that out for yourselves if you want.

This sounds a lot like the Kevin Costner role in Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, so here's hoping this movie turns out better than that one did. Keaton seems like he'd be fun to watch sneaking around in the shadows and providing sage advice to an up-and-coming agent, so we'll keep you posted on this movie's new developments — including who ends up being cast as Rapp — as soon as we hear about them.

Michael Cuesta (Kill The Messenger, Homeland) is directing from a screenplay by Stephen Schiff (Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps), and production starts this summer.

“Stan Hurley is one of the pillars of the Vince Flynn universe and a favorite character for millions of readers, so casting him was a daunting challenge,” said Cuesta. “To have an actor as intelligent and gifted as Michael Keaton bring this beloved character to life is a thrill for everyone involved in American Assassin and a cause for celebration amongst ‘Hurley’ fans the world over.”

Have you read the book? What do you think about a movie version of this story?