Jon Snow battled wildings and White Walkers, sparred with Imps over his bastardliness and his father over the Stark name. Kit Harrington is going to make the long climb down the big wall to fill James Bond’s shoes. Hopefully there’s a phone in them.

It was just leaked that a new Spooks movie is filming with Game of Thrones’ star Kit Harington joining the cast. The movie will continue the story of the popular British spy series Spooks, which we called MI-5 here in the states. The series ended in 2011. Spooks ran for ten seasons.

The big screen continuation will be called Spooks: The Greater Good. According to reports, it is already in production.

Kit Harington, who also erupted in the film Pompeii, and Jennifer Ehle, who played in Robocop and Zero Dark Thirty, will join Peter Firth who returns as Sir Harry Pearce, the big guy at MI-5’s “Section D” counter-terrorism unit. Harington plays Will Crombie, who is probably the son of the now dead MI-5 spy Bill Crombie.

Spooks: The Greater Good is being directed by Bharat Nalluri, who helmed some episodes of the series and also made Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day and the pilot for The 100.

SOURCE: IGN

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In case you didn’t notice, FX premiered it strange and strangely alluring take on the Coen Brothers’ Fargo earlier this week. That episode got off to a strong start for the limited-run series that looks deep into the dark shades of a Minnesotan winter snow. Now, FX has released a full preview of what to expect from future episodes.

In the new Fargo preview “Still to Come,” we are taken further down the rabbit hole of crime and criminally nice manners.

With an impressive cast that includes Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Allison Tolman, and Adam Goldberg, among others, murder and crime has never appeared so sunny. And we suspect that is the dangerous point…

Fargo premieres April 15, 2014 only on FX.

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In an interview with Forbes, Zack Snyder opened up about the decision making process that led to Batman being included in the Man of Steelsequel, which, for lack of a better title, we're still stuck referring to as Batman vs. Superman. Here's an excerpt for you:

...after Man of Steel finished and we started talking about what would be in the next movie, I started subtly mentioning that it would be cool if he faced Batman. In the first meeting, it was like, “Maybe Batman?” Maybe at the end of the second movie, some Kryptonite gets delivered to Bruce Wayne’s house or something. Like in a cryptic way, that’s the first time we see him. But then, once you say it out loud, right? You’re in a story meeting talking about, like, who should [Superman] fight if he fought this giant alien threat Zod who was basically his equal physically, from his planet, fighting on our turf…You know, who to fight next? The problem is, once you say it out loud, then it’s kind of hard to go back, right? Once you say, “What about Batman?” then you realize, “Okay, that’s a cool idea. What else?” I mean, what do you say after that? … I really believe that only after contemplating who could face [Superman] did Batman come into the picture.

Elsewhere in the same interview (which, if you're a fan of Mr. Snyder's work, you should definitely go read it, as it's quite revealing), he speaks about how much The Dark Knight Returns changed his perspective when he first read it. In other words, despite all the recent rewrites and the addition of Wonder Woman to the mix, it still sounds like a conflict between Batman and Superman will be at the core of the film.

As for when we might actually see a shot of Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman, it doesn't sound like anything is imminent. Still, Mr. Snyder understands the importance of getting official images out before leaked set photos hit the web. He assures fans that "when we finally do show it, it’s gonna be real fun...you’re gonna want the real shot."

He's probably right. And since Warner Bros. have been quite good about getting their official photos out ahead of the paparazzi (Gothamwas one notable exception) with their first Heny Cavill photo for Man of Steeland the first image of Grant Gustin for The Flash TV series, we have to assume that we'll see photos of Ben Affleck as Batman and Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman shortly before any location shooting has to be done with them in costume.

Read all our Batman vs. Superman coverage here.

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St. Patrick's Day is long over, but some of the Irish luck has rubbed off into April. After a long wait, we've finally been given a movie poster for the upcoming Lionsgate/WWE Studios production of Leprechaun: Origins starring Dylan Postl, otherwise known as Hornswoggle. The film acts as a reboot for the franchise, which hasn't had a new entry since the sixth movie, Leprechaun: Back 2 tha Hood, in 2003. It will be directed by Zach Lipovsky.

Hornswoggle will be playing the title character, the leprechaun Lubdan. As is his gimmick throughout the series, Lubdan is overly protective of his enchanted gold and will go through horrible, violent means to get back what is his if some greedy fool decides to run off with it. Little is really known about the plot of this movie outside of what the title tells us.

Here's the movie poster in all its golden glory.

The reboot was announced back in early 2012 and for a time, it was said that it would be coming out in March 2013. There's still yet to be an actual release date other than the claim that it will be out sometime this year. Other than the poster and the casting, the only piece of info we've been given is a sneak peek released by WWE's YouTube channel on March 17th. Just be warned, we don't get to see much of note.

The leprechaun role hits close to home for Postl, who has been playing the leprechaun gimmick of Hornswoggle in WWE since 2006. Originally called the Little Bastard, the vertically-challenged grappler has been used as a comedy character for much of his career, mostly skewing to the younger crowd while causing the older fans to grind their teeth at his antics. It didn't help that the commentators would happily cheer him on whenever he'd have to take part in a match, only to react like they just watch a puppy get run over the moment he's shoved down by his opponent. Then there's Little People's Court and the never-ending feud with Chavo Guerrero and the fact that he's the final Cruiserweight Champion and the storyline where he was Vince McMahon's long-lost son and... I'm getting sidetracked here.

This is his second major movie role after getting a small part in this year's Muppets Most Wanted. He only got one line and was constantly overshadowed by more well-known names like Ray Liotta and Danny Trejo, but it was something at least. Personally, I always thought his best role was the time he dressed up as a bear so "The Dazzler" Daniel Bryan could kick him in the junk (4:46 into the video).

On the subject of slasher movies under the WWE Studios banner that involve wrestlers murdering everyone, Kane is set to star in the straight-to-DVD release of See No Evil 2, also to see the light of day sometime this year. Personally, I always thought his best role was the time he dressed ups as a human beatbox so he could kick Hornswoggle out of defensive horror (3:42 into the video).

I haven't seen WWE Studios' current horror release Oculus, but if it has a scene of Karen Gillan kicking Hornswoggle via some kind of mirror magic, I'm so there.

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We have all seen post-apocalyptic nightmares unleashed upon both the big budget and indie realm of film. However, we have never before seen David Michôd’s take on the existential subgenre before. Along with Guy Pearce and Robert Pattinson as his stars, the Australian Animal Kingdom director and writer of Hesher paints an Outback from a time after civilization has also gone to the wind. It is also one so haunting as to already be part of the Cannes Official Selection for later this year.

To be released by A24, The Rover is set 10 years following the collapse of society when a man will go to any lengths to take back the thing that still matters to him. Sparse and mysterious, this film is engulfed by the arid Australian desert when Eric (Pearce) has his last sole possession stolen by a roaming gang of post-apocalyptic thugs. Teaming with the gang’s weakest and abandoned member, Rey (Pattinson), Eric sets out to steal it back.

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Cold in July, the new thriller from Mulberry St. director Jim Mickle, isn't you usual revenge flick. With a cast that includes Michael C. Hall, Don Johnson, and Sam Shepard, Cold in July is part thriller, part revenge flick, with plenty of straight-up action thrown in.

If that doesn't convince you, the fact that it's based on a book by genre master Joe R. Lansdale might be enough. 

Watch the trailer here:

Cold in July opens on May 23rd.

Read our interview with Joe R. Lansdale about adapting Cold in Julyright here.

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The Black List is a Hollywood institution, an annual ranking of the industry's best un-produced scripts. Sometimes the screenplays are good. Sometimes they're just cinematic, based on a great hook and little else. And sometimes the scripts are the results of cronyism, people doing other people favors, people boosting their own clients. In fact, rarely do the scripts on the Black List become produced films: many simply allow the writers to move on to bigger, more familiar jobs with adaptations and franchise pictures.

But sometimes the scripts get made. That too is a shark tank of arbitrary events and accidents: many times the scripts are re-written, mangled and barely recognized upon their arrival to the screen. Usually, they don't even boast the same title. Ultimately, it doesn't mean much: last Friday's Draft Day was the leader of the Black List years ago, but the finished product feels soft, compromised, disposable. But looking back on the various finalists reveals some of the last decade's best films, and some of their worst. Here are the 10 best and 10 worst finished films that once occupied the Black List.

10. In Bruges, Martin McDonough

Playwright Martin McDonaugh's gleefully profane directorial debut finds two assassins stuck in an unwelcoming historical city as they await orders from their homicidal boss. Colin Farrell restarted his career with a well-deserved Golden Globe for his lead role, but Brendan Gleeson brings a peculiar tenderness to his supporting role, and Ralph Fiennes is a hoot as the homicidal, foul-mouthed villain.

9. Source Code, Ben Ripley

Ripley's script, a hypnotic yarn about a soldier stuck in a temporal loop, was a peculiar, thinky thriller on the page. It was director Duncan Jones that turned the material into an unlikely blockbuster, a smart action picture deeply haunted by its own theological implications.

8. Django Unchained/Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino

Both of Tarantino's award-nominated masterpieces were widely circulated within the industry, scripts that promised Tarantino's typically refracted storytelling and sizable juicy lead roles. The end result were two films that established the filmmaker as not only one of the world's most bankable directors, but also one of the most subversive and dexterous. Most argue the Black List is for writers who are not yet established (The Hit List is the best option for that) but it's hard to deny how, through Tarantino's broken diction and terrible spelling, the action and comedy still shine through.

7. Never Let Me Go, Alex Garland

Adapting the ghostly best-selling novel, Garland (28 Days Later) teamed with director Mark Romanek to downplay the concept's science fiction elements and run with the deep tragedy of the lost boys and girls played by Carey Mulligan, Keira Knightley, and a charmingly young Andrew Garfield. To say too much would be revealing the nature of this story: to read it on the page must be a gut punch.

6. Margin Call, JC Chandor

Nominated for an Oscar, Chandor's first time out is one of the Black List's fairy tale stories. As writer and director, Chandor crafts a nightmare story about the compromises and sickness of Wall Street sharks on the eve of the 2008 financial crisis. With minimal fuss, Chandor takes a complex story and turns it into instantly-relatable Greek tragedy.

5. The Social Network, Aaron Sorkin

Winner of the Academy Award, Sorkin's pitch-black story of the beginning of Facebook started out as merely a chance to exploit the social network's brand. Instead, the result was a Faustian tale of the nastiness and backstabbing between Mark Zuckerberg and his collaborators as he shaped the modern world for the very worst. Through the eyes of David Fincher, it went from a historical chronicle of a jerk into a horror story about the dissolving social niceties of our time.

4. The Prestige, Jonathan Nolan

Coming off Batman Begins, the Nolans were only beginning to expand their onscreen empire with this magician thriller. The acclaimed script was a page-turner about two men bound by blood to destroy each other one trick at a time. It was brother Christopher who found a stupendous cast that included Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as bloodthirsty rivals locked within the typically-vast Nolan puzzle box.

3. Zodiac, James Vanderbilt

David Fincher gets all the best scripts, doesn't he? This elliptical tale of the flawed hunt for the Zodiac killer layers several stories on top of each other in telling the tale not of a killer, but of an incomplete truth, which a group of independent people with confirmation bias tried to pursue by surrendering their souls.

2. Margaret, Kenneth Lonergan

It's a surprise to see this script on the very first Black List considering what an unwieldy mess many considered it to be. Playwright Lonergan ended up directing a massive adaptation of his work, one that he ultimately refused to trim, even after editing room visits from the likes of Martin Scorsese. This multi-layered story of a young girl struggling to process a great tragedy sat on the shelf for so long that two of its high profile producers – Sidney Pollack and Anthony Minghella – passed away. While Fox Searchlight eventually attempted to distance themselves from the movie, critics didn't miss the film's quiet release, finding a film of unsettling beauty, complex emotion and disquieting tragedy.

1. There Will Be Blood, Paul Thomas Anderson

It almost seems like a joke that Anderson's epic oilman story, loosely adapted from the works of Upton Sinclair, was ever involved with something as modest as a list of unproduced scripts. The script was an Anderson one through and through, but by casting the titanic Daniel Day-Lewis, he turned a compelling drama into a mammoth achievement, a film with camera movements of sinister clarity, music of unhinged mischief and a lead performance for the ages.

And the worst...

10. Seven Pounds, Grant Nieporte

Again, the Black List scripts often get mangled on their way to the screen. Most of this comes from the stars they attract, who either hire their own A-List scribe or have a secret team of writers shaping the material to their liking. It's what happened with the Black List finalist “Witchita”, which someone mutated into the forgettable Tom Cruise vehicle Knight And Day. And it happens with Will Smith projects too: it's unclear how Seven Pounds mutated onto the screen as a dry, dour, dimwitted tale of a tragic martyr, but you can bet Nieporte wasn't the last name to tackle the material.

9. Bad Words, Andrew Dodge

Jason Bateman recently directed himself in this joyless trudge through dirty-talking redemption. Also starring as the manchild who travels the country participating in childrens' spelling bees and winning out of a technicality. Bateman has no one he can bounce against, leading to his endless sarcastic poker face as kids spell dirty words around him, usually after hearing a racial epithet from Bateman's mouth. Never funny.

8. Tonight, He Comes [Hancock], Zach Gilligan

Remember what we said about Smith? This R-rated superhero comedy was dark as hell when it made it across the industry. Muscle was exercised as a number of writers came aboard the project to ensure it would be a much safer family product. The incoherent, nonsensical Hancock was the end result.

7. The Bucket List, Justin Zackham

Likely landed on the Black List because not only does it feature a collection of old man clichés, but it also has “list” in the title.

6. The Oranges, Jay Reiss, Ian Helfer

Yet another dull, wanna-be middlebrow comedy about how suburbia is rotten to the core. Every year the Black List is filled with something like ten of these, stories where someone commits a faux pas and immediately becomes a local pariah. And usually they have a cutesy title like this.

5. I Hate You Dad [That’s My Boy], David Caspe

The title was later softened to That's My Boy, but once Adam Sandler got his hands on this odious story of a boozy father hitting up his not-very-young son for cash, you knew it was going to be full of dick jokes, homophobia, and incessant product placement. You probably couldn't have predicted the jokes about statutory rape and incest, though.

4. Wolverine, David Benioff

The rumor was that Benioff (Game of Thrones) walked into Fox offices and came away a million dollars richer for his pitch. The other rumor is that absolutely none of Benioff's R-rated concept made it into X-Men Origins: Wolverine, maybe the most incompetent blockbuster of its era. Strange that this script landed on the first-ever Black List, considering that the finished film doesn't even feel like it's been written, just improvised on the spot and later CGI'ed to Hell.

3. A Couple Of Dicks [Cop Out], Mark Cullen And Rob Cullen

Hard to believe that at one point this comedy, featuring a mismatched pair of cops searching for a rare baseball card, ended up being the industry's hottest script. A couple of revisions later, the script landed in the lap of Kevin Smith, who would go on to alert people to the fact that he was not an action director repeatedly during the film's runtime. Considering his checkered career, this tired slog might be the single worst film of Bruce Willis' career.

2. Welcome To People [People Like Us], Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert

Considering the nature of their other blockbuster-heavy work, which includes the Transformers series, the title to this popular script seemed apt: have these guys ever met a real person? By the time the finished product hit screens, under the clunky title People Like Us, the evidence screamed “no.” A deeply insincere drama about a man putting off the nature of his inheritance for highly unlikely reasons, the picture resonates only with people who have so much money that they haven't had a real human experience in years.

1. The Number 23, Fernley Phillips

Maybe the most hilarious “hot” script in Hollywood history, this dopey howler about the murderous nature of numerology effectively put the brakes on Jim Carrey's career as a leading man. Carrey stars as a mild-mannered dogcatcher who discovers a book about the number 23 that eerily mirrors certain aspects of his own life. But when he investigates further, he finds himself struggling with his own identity. And by “investigates further,” I mean that he finally says the name of the book's author out loud: Topsy Kretts. It just gets more ridiculous from there.

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Oh what a night it must have been when Clint Eastwood pitched that he wanted to do a musical. Yes, that’s right, Dirty Harry is making a song-and-dance picture. Of course, it is one of great importance when it is about the rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.

As based on the Broadway hit show, Jersey Boys tells the biographical story of five friends from the Garden State who made it big in the 1960s on the unusual vocal talent of Frankie Valli, leading to a lifetime of fame, celebrity, and rock ‘n roll. This also being an Eastwood movie, there still remains in the trailer some lingering sadness too in the fourth wall-breaking, big screen belter.

Jersey Boys will be walking like a man onto the big screen come June 20, 2014.

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Remarkably, the TV spots and marketing for Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures’ upcoming Godzilla has kept it squarely on the human cost of a giant lizard stampeding through the western seaboard.

In the newest video, we see the collateral damage from the King of Monsters making cities his realm when Bryan Cranston reflects on what he has lost to the 40-story behemoth, and Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olsen’s characters deal with the reality of the situation.

Directed by Gareth Edwards, the new Godzilla stars Bryan Cranston, Aaron Taylor-Johnson Elizabeth Olsen, David Strathaim, Ken Watanabe, Juliette Binoche, and Sally Hawkins. It opens May 16, 2014 in 2D, 3D, and IMAX.

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In the first two official images for the new big screen adaptation of William Shakespeare’s infamous Scottish play, Macbeth (a theatre kid just crossed himself), we are allowed to glimpse at Michael Fassbender as the Bard’s most ambitious of protagonists and of Marion Cotillard as the cleanliness enthusiast, Lady Macbeth.

As released via Daily Mail, fans can enjoy the rather period approach to this medieval story (though written during James I’s reign), which features the king-to-be on Scotland’s ancient battlefields and in the arms of his loving and very, very supportive wife.

In this humble writer’s estimation, there has yet to be a satisfying film adaptation of this classic tale of greed, guilt, and guts. So, this Justin Kurzel directed take on the story of court intrigue, betrayal, and bewitching superstition is more than welcome.

Like the wood of Birnam, Macbeth will move into theaters sometime in 2015.

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In the newest video from DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon 2, fans of the charming land of Vikings and fire-breathers can glimpse what living in peace can mean for the land of Berk.

After the intervention from Toothless and Hiccup in the last film, the two species co-exist not only in harmony, but also in athletics. As witnessed in the new clip, the only thing better than dragon flying is dragon flying while catching sheep. You’ll just have to see for yourself…

Promoted as the second chapter of an epic How to Train Your Dragon Trilogy, this installment returns to the fantastical world of the heroic Viking Hiccup and his faithful dragon Toothless.  The inseparable duo must protect the peace – and save the future of men and dragons from the power-hungry Drago.

The film returns cast members like Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrara, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Kristen Wiig to this world, while also adding newcomers Kit Harington, Cate Blanchett and Djimon Honsou.

How to Train Your Dragon 2 opens June 13, 2014 in 3D.

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Son of Batman, the latest film from the DC Animated Universe (via Warner Bros.) made its world premiere Friday night (April 18) at WonderCon at the Anaheim Convention Center in California.  After the film unspooled on a large screen in the convention center arena (which holds around 9,000 people), fans were treated to a panel featuring stars Jason O’Mara (Batman), Sean Maher (Nightwing), Stuart Allen (Damian) and Xander Berkeley (Kirk Langstrom), along with producer James Tucker, director Ethan Spaulding, designer Phil Bourassa and dialogue director Andrea Romano.

The film is based on Grant Morrison and Andy Kubert’s Batman and Son run in the comics and is part of the new continuity being established in the DC Animated Universe similar to the New 52 in the books themselves. While it was cool to watch the movie on a big screen (since they’re direct-to-home releases), I won’t get into any kind of review here – that’s coming later.

Jason O’Mara does fine work in his second outing as the Dark Knight after Justice League: War, and admitted on the panel that he had a bit of trouble finding the right voice for the character on that previous film. Asked by a fan during the question-and-answer part of the panel about taking on a role either voiced or played in live action by a long list of distinguished actors, O’Mara replied, "It may have happened subconsciously, but I didn't want to repeat previous performances and just truthfully play the character in the moment. So I had to tune out everything that had come before and try to create something as unique and authentic as I could."

James Tucker asked by moderator Rick Sands about the violence in the film – this is definitely not an animated movie for kids, as it features quite a bit of graphic bloodshed. “They keep moving the line,” Tucker admitted. “We have to get a PG-13 rating so we just do the film, submit it and see what happens.” He argued that their competition is video games and other “edgy” entertainment. Questioned about how they chose which parts of Morrison’s long-running story to include, the producer replied, “We didn’t have 20 hours to tell the complete comic book story, so we had to pick and choose. (main villain Deathstroke) was in the arc from the beginning -- there were certain iconic things that we wanted to touch on and we're not done yet."

That “not done yet” remark hung in the air, but Tucker, Spaulding, O’Mara and Romano all deflected the question of whether the Son of Batman story would continue in a new film or whether more adaptations of popular arcs from the comics were on the way. The most uncomfortable moment of the panel, however, came when a fan questioned whether DC Animation and Warner Bros. Pictures in general are even interested in other DC characters besides Batman.

“It seems like you are so dependent on Batman across all of Warner Bros.,” the fan complained. “Do you even like the other characters in the DC universe?”

Moderator Rich Sands cut the questioner off, telling the panel they didn’t have to answer that, but it was a slightly embarrassing moment for sure. Asked who he would like to see onscreen, the fan mentioned Hawkman and more of Aquaman, to which someone onstage (I didn’t see who) answered, “Guess you didn’t see (animated TV series) The Brave and the Bold.”

Things settled down after that, but the moment was perhaps indicative of the uneasy relationship that DC and its fans have often had lately.

Son of Batman arrives on Blu-ray and DVD on May 6.

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Very little has been revealed about 20^th Century Fox’s upcoming reboot of Fantastic Four, save for its director (Chronicle helmer Josh Trank) and its cast. But producer and screenwriter Simon Kinberg was on hand at WonderCon this weekend to promote X-Men: Days of Future Past– on which he has handled the same duties -- and sat down with Den Of Geek to talk about both franchises.

With the Fantastic Four cast – Miles Teller as Reed Richards, Kate Mara as Sue Storm, Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm and Jamie Bell as Ben Grimm – skewing somewhat younger than the characters have been mostly portrayed in the comics, we asked Kinberg if the story was going further back in time:

"We’re definitely telling a younger story that the original films did. It depends on what books you look at. There are some, like the Ultimate books, that tell this story. So it is an origin story of the Fantastic Four, and it does follow them before they really know what a superhero is."

He added:

"They’re older than high school, but they’re not quite grown into the world. If anything, this is a coming of age story."

Pressed on whether we’ll see the iconic sequence in which the Four gain their powers after being bombarded with cosmic rays during a space flight, Kinberg was more reticent about the details:

"There is archetypal imagery of how they get their powers, for sure, and it does involve some sort of scientific travel."

The movie begins shooting in Louisiana in about two weeks. Kinberg had more to say about Fantastic Four and a lot to say about X-Men: Days of Future Past as well, so look for that interview to arrive soon. In the meantime, what do you think about his comments on the direction Fantastic Four is taking?

Fantastic Four is due out June 19, 2015.

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No question about it: the highlight of the Warner Bros. Pictures presentation at WonderCon in Anaheim on Saturday (April 19) was a full frontal shot.

But before you start imagining what it would be like to see your favorite actor or actress naked on a tremendous screen in the 9,000-seat Anaheim Convention Center arena, settle down: this wasn’t even a look at a person, but a lizard.

When that beast is named Godzilla, however, and only a tiny little sliver of the public has seen this image beforehand, the excitement level is just as intense. The capacity crowd at the arena exploded with delight and awe as director Gareth Edwards unveiled a clip – previously seen only by a much smaller audience at Austin’s South by Southwest festival – that exposed the legendary Japanese monster in all his glory.

The clip showed, in context, a number of images we’ve seen in the brilliant trailers for the movie so far. The locale looks like Hawaii. Star Aaron Taylor-Johnson is on some sort of elevated train, seated next to a young Japanese boy. The train stops as the power goes off. Meanwhile, a man at a beach luau grabs his wife and daughter as a massive tsunami-like wave heads toward shore.

Ken Watanabe watches from the deck of a vessel out at sea as a gigantic shape passes underneath it. The tsunami hits the shore and a deluge of water floods the beaches and crashes through the local streets, drowning untold numbers and turning the downtown area into a swamp.

Then the power comes back on – and Johnson looks through the window of the train to see a large creature (a mix of insect and lobster which resembles the monster from Cloverfield in many ways) stomping into an airport. The thing (known as a Muto) flips planes and other vehicles with ease, turning a runway into an inferno as horrified passengers watch through a gate window.

Then the window itself is blocked by a massive, scaled foot, we see the Muto spin around to look – and then comes the money shot: a long, slow tilt that starts at Godzilla’s feet and crawls all the way up to his fearsome head as he bellows his famous roar.

Thousands of fans screamed their own approval as the clip faded to black (one fellow near us kept shouting, “Thank you! Thank you!”) and Edwards broke out in an ear-to-ear grin.

He didn’t give up any secrets or revelations in his chat with moderator Drew McWeeny (which also featured another look at the movie’s latest trailer), but he probably didn’t have to – that one view of Godzilla was enough to send this crowd out happy.

The rest of the Warner Bros. presentation included a look at Tom Cruise’s new time travel war film, Edge of Tomorrow, with an appreciative Bill Paxton (who co-stars in the film) showing up and getting a rousing ovation from the crowd – particularly when he threw out some of his classic lines from Aliens and Weird Science. Asked why he thought they hired him for Edge of Tomorrow, Paxton replied, “They needed someone to shout ‘Game over, man!’”

The Edge of Tomorrow trailer was suitably action-packed; we’ll see if director Doug Liman makes the story (based on the graphic novel All You Need is Kill) equally rousing. Paxton remarked that the combat suits he, Cruise and Emily Blunt wore in the film each weighed 75 pounds: “They had these iron cages on the set in which they literally hung us on chains to take the weight off our shoulders between takes.”

Warner Bros.’ third offering yesterday afternoon was a look at the new tornado disaster movie, Into the Storm– which seems to be an updated, more visually enhanced version of Twister. We’re always up for a good disaster flick, though, and from the footage displayed, director Steven Quale (previous a visual effects supervisor on Avatar) takes the viewers right into the heart of what it feels like to be in the midst of a slew of freak storms. One shot of a tornado literally on fire was either over the top or striking in a surreal way – it’s hard to say which.

But make no mistake – the biggest force of nature on display here was Godzilla.

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First-time filmmakers are often a shot in the dark. With a vision unpronounced anywhere but in their head, they ask audiences, and anyone else who will listen, to take a leap of faith. Further, first time actors-turned-helmers carry the added burden of transcending their (hopefully) respected craft for another, usually in the face of daunting skepticism. Nevertheless, veteran character actor Chris Messina vaulted easily past both hurdles for something more than a great debut with Alex of Venice; he made a great movie, period.

One of the best films to bow at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, Alex of Venice would initially suggest casual familiarity with its focus on a family in upheaval and transition. But just as the title reflects a place that is less old world canals and gondolas, and more new age boardwalks and Ferris wheels, the movie finds a uniquely quizzical perspective on these timeless themes, overcoming within minutes genre conventions in favor of something startling authentic and infinitely endearing.

The titular Alex, played with great gawky appeal by Mary Elizabeth Winstead, is a very deliberate lawyer, environmentalist, and a young mother who has a firm handle on her life. Until she doesn’t. Around the same time that her lived-in, stage-acting father Roger (Don Johnson) is forgetting his lines a little too often for a new play, she also sees her home life crumble overnight when frustrated husband George (Messina) decides he needs to peace out of beachside domesticity. The reason for his departure from this stay-at-home dad existence is left somewhat vague other than he needs a change as he grows older, but Alex is likewise forced to grow into a different person, one who must reflect on her past decisions from getting married at 19 and onwards.

To help Alex balance single motherhood with her suddenly less immediate crusade of protecting Westside marshlands from development, sister Lily (Katie Nehra) flies in to guide young Dakota (Skylar Gaertner) through splitting parents. Plus, she also knows how to encourage Alex to get out there again for new dates, new dresses, and new experiences—like dropping ecstasy.

The strength of Alex of Venice is that Messina deals with issues well known to any family that’s ever weathered a crisis (all of them). This is a point which is wryly made self-aware to the film and its characters when Roger auditions for a local production of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, a hundred-year-old play about another family that feels lost to the wind, albeit one that is undoubtedly more Russian, and thus unrelentingly depressing. Alex’s more bemused and meta tact allows the film to cultivate a pace of life, lingering in long shots on the peculiarity and humor that can be as implicit in divorce as the sun-baked landscape is in SoCal. It also lets the movie breathe in several strong, career-best performances.

As can be expected when an actor sits behind the camera, Alex of Venice enjoys a performer’s showcase of work from the ensemble, including a mesmerizing Winstead, who explores a new maternal side of her onscreen persona. Alex is an exceedingly fastidious mother who works in the abstract to provide a loving home for her family. She fights the good fight in court because she is determined to make a cleaner world for her son and (long-unborn) grandchildren, and she butts heads with her free-spirited sister, because Lily’s idea of planning is to decide which ride she’ll take her nephew on next while they’re playing hooky. But as Alex’s life swings wildly in opposing directions after George leaves home, she must reevaluate priorities she did not even know existed, an argument that George crystallizes when her first reaction to his absence is “who will cook the steaks tomorrow.” Like the burnt and blackened beef at the next day’s barbecue, Alex’s life might need a new technique.

In many ways, Alex serves as a companion performance to another remarkable turn by Winstead in 2012’s vastly underrated Smashed. At first glance, the characters could not be further apart given how much control Alex enjoys as her family’s breadwinner and anchor, as opposed to a life left ablaze and at the bottom of a flaming cocktail drink. Yet, Winstead’s character in Smashed starts from that empty shot glass when she is forced to reconsider her marriage and choices that led to this woeful alcoholism, and Alex’s responsible tranquility is too burned down, culminating in a hypnotic daze of purple after she is lulled into her first (and likely only) drug experience for the movie’s most humorous sequence. It is a fascinatingly conflicted female character who’s allowed depths and nuances rarely glimpsed in stories told on the big screen anymore, and Winstead savors every moment with some of her best work to date.

However, the aspect of the movie that sticks long after the credits end is a shockingly reinvented Don Johnson. Between Alex of Venice and Cold in July, 2014 may be the year that Johnson began a creative, independent renaissance. By playing an aging actor who has some small celebrity from a “TV show I used to be on,” Johnson and Messina knowingly subvert the image of Miami Vice’s Mr. Cool. As a struggling thespian who never quite broke out, Roger provides a certain unpredictable mania to his daughters and grandson’s world, even before his obvious Alzheimer's is diagnosed. One of the worst possible diseases imaginable for an actor, Roger’s amiable absent-mindedness perpetually threatens to curtail into tragedy. The movie’s narrative ends before the hard days come to pass, yet as someone who has lived through seeing family members go down that long and agonizing road, Johnson’s appearance in this movie more than hits all the right notes; it hits an abysmal truth. Johnson displays a well of sagacity here that we can only hope will be sipped from more frequently in the future.

Ultimately, Messina’s film, working from a screenplay by Justin Shilton, Katie Nehra, and Jessica Goldberg, is about finding that unexpected warmth from its performers and in its central family. These are characters that audiences should know from other fiction and their own lives—with Nehra notably writing a scene-stealing role for herself as the blithe sister. The satisfaction comes from how fresh it feels in a package that is inherently smart, and through a story that’s executed with a maturity and genuine legitimacy that is all too rare in cinema these days. With any luck, this picture will be the first of many for Messina at the helm.

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Friendship can be the most difficult kind of love, because you don’t go to bed with them every night. At least that is what Susanna Fogel posits in her first feature, Life Partners. The sweet and savvy story about the strongest of connections recently had its Tribeca Film Festival premiere, but it will have a longer life in the hearts of anyone who has ever had (or lost) a true friend.

As the ballad of Sasha (Leighton Meester) and Paige (Gillian Jacobs), Life Partners’ protagonists share two things in common: they both love Top Model and the longest relationship either’s been in is their friendship. At the age of 29, Paige enjoys a budding career in the legal world that she has to constantly downplay around her special BFF, a slacker receptionist in a dead-end job pretending that she’s still a musician oh-so-many years after college. Sasha is also a lesbian, a potentially salacious avenue for storytelling that Fogel blessedly chooses not to exploit for dime novel melodrama and titillation between her two stars. No, the rift between these besties inevitably comes in the form of a man named Tim (Adam Brody) who slowly, awkwardly, but ever persistently sweeps Paige off her feet just before she turns 30.

The obvious conflict that ensues is Sasha being displaced in her best friend’s life by one of growing worth in blandly likable Tim, a movie-quoting golfer with a 9-to-5 job not even worth repeating for the filmmakers. This picture clearly belongs to threatened Sasha, and Meester relishes the long overdue center stage by finding grace and poise in the consistently incredulous and indignant.

The story of friends growing apart, especially when one of them gets engaged or married, is a well-worn narrative thread, but Life Partners finds a certain irresistibility in it thanks to the chemistry between Meester and Jacobs. The stars of the movie radiate affection for one another, making it believable that these two polar opposites have stayed close since girlhood. This relation is grounded in unspoken but telling design that observes them shedding the uncomfortable vices of adulthood whenever they get together just amongst themselves. In particular for Sasha’s 29^th birthday, their idea of fun is to rent out a motel room with a pool and to put cell phones away for board games and excessive wine drinking (the epitome of adolescence).

Sadly for Sasha, she remains in her rut looking back at her early 20s with envy while Paige’s life continues to move forward in a way that will end with Sasha no longer being the first person Paige talks to everyday and the last every evening. Their friendship has provided a shelter of co-dependency that has prevented them from going out in the dating world, but that unused guitar lookstruly desperate when that is all Sasha has for company each night.

Branching further out into Sasha’s life beyond this connection, however, can be a mixed bag. Fogel explores the lesbian lifestyle in a refreshing and original way for non-practitioners, showing different group activities, bars, and meet-ups where couples connect and fall-off like an all-girl high school with all the gossip and watchful eyes that entails. However, both Sasha’s friends and her mutually exclusive lovers—played by a rotating cast of well-known actresses including Gabourey Sidibe, Kate McKinnon, Abby Elliot, and Beth Dover—contribute mostly formulaic diversions implicit in comedies, romantic or otherwise. Beyond facilitating an intriguing look into that culture, they still fall into the clichés of “the best friends” (or in the case, other best friends) who remark on the central romance with unremarkable statements. For Sasha, this means shaking their heads at her growing distance from Paige or at Sasha’s poor choice of lovers, demonstrated by the two SNL alum who play different sides of the same flaky coin

Brody fares better as Paige’s love interest because of his understated social ineptitude that disarmingly—or in insidiously from Sasha’s perspective—expands into something substantial. It is not Brody’s movie, but he makes a nice foil for adulthood against the endlessly childish Sasha.

However, it always comes back down to Sasha and Paige. Playing the total inverse of her lovable personification for failure on Community, Jacobs gets to find a new onscreen voice of maturity, not that Paige is exactly a grown-up. As another character has stated on Jacobs’ show, “adulthood begins at 30” for this generation, and on the tip of that decade, Paige surprises even herself with her readiness for it. Sadly, Sasha spends the whole movie looking at that new finish line for youth in our culture, and she is still unable to cope. The yin-and-yang of this pairing provides the movie with its pathos, but both the actress’ performances elevate the picture’s quality immeasurably.

Life Partners’ interest is about the state of a friendship during an (admittedly late) point of transition that every life goes through. It is never more or less than that. But with some strong character work, especially in the form of an indie star-ready Meester, these life partners are an enduringly happy one to visit.

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Book your flights now, DC Comics fans. If you live in the UK, you can see Batman vs. Superman before your American pals. According to the website for the UK Film Distributor's Association, Batman vs. Supermanwill open on April 29th, a full week before its currently scheduled May 6th release.

Since Warner Bros.'Batman vs. Superman is currently going head to head with Captain America 3on that May 6th release date, we wonder if this will spark another counter-move by Disney, as the two studios continue to try and checkmate each other out of valuable (and already crowded) summer 2016 superhero release date real estate.

Batman vs. Superman has already moved from its initial July 17th, 2015 release date (which was then taken by Marvel's Ant-Man) to its current May 6th, 2016 one. It might not be too surprising to see both this and Captain America 3continue to dance around the calendar, although both studios seem adamant that this won't happen. 

Thanks to Dark Horizonsfor the tip.

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