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7 Essential Movie Performances By Julia Roberts

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7 Essential Movie Performances By Julia Roberts

Since the late 1980s, Julia Roberts (Runaway Bride) and her dazzling smile have brightened screens large and small worldwide. While her classic beauty quickly sealed her fate as one of America’s most beloved sweethearts, the powerful chemistry she’s channeled across her diverse array of film and television projects to date proves her acting prowess time and time again. Comfortable in dramas, comedies, and thrillers alike, you never know what kind of project Roberts will commit to next. You can be sure, though, that she’ll dive into the role channeling confidence, charm, and authenticity.

Reportedly set to star in the upcoming Universal Pictures romantic comedy Ticket to Paradise alongside George Clooney (Gravity), Roberts continues her refusal to pigeonhole herself into one particular style of content. Yet, no matter the project she picks, Roberts always delivers profound strength on screen. Here are some of this Academy Award winner’s most unforgettable performances over her decades-long career.

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Erin Brockovich in Erin Brockovich (2000)

Julia Roberts won her Academy Award for best actress playing the title role of Erin Brockovich in this Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s 11) film. Erin is an unemployed, single mom desperate to finally land a job and provide for her three kids. Based on a true story, Erin Brockovich tells the tale of a scrappy mom turned legal activist who plays by her own rules and follows her gut above all, waging a game-changing lawsuit against PG&E.

The charisma, determination, and compassion Roberts balances as Erin throughout this film, weaving her way through a multitude of complex relationships, is riveting. Erin musters remarkable courage, defying all odds to not only support her children but to also do right by the residents attached to her lawsuit, poisoned by PG&E’s tainted water supply. The plight of these residents suffering corporate negligence beautifully parallels the struggles Erin’s faced as a single mother, trapped in an economic reality that isn’t created to benefit her situation. Ultimately it’s how Roberts leverages Erin’s unique charms to combat obstacles as they arise that amounts to a truly exceptional, empowering, award-winning performance.

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Katherine Anne Watson in Mona Lisa Smile (2003)

Set in the 1950s, Mike Newell’s (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) Mona Lisa Smile sees Julia Roberts as Katherine Ann Watson, an unmarried graduate student from UCLA who takes a teaching position in the Art History department of Wellesley College, then an all-women’s college. As Katherine, Roberts acts as the liberal foil to her traditionally-minded students, determined to empower as many as she can to live full lives and make use of their impressive intellects. Inevitably, scandal ensues as many of the girls refuse to be seduced by Katherine’s lessons of awakening, hellbent on performing their traditional gender roles.

While Katherine does get ensconced in a secondary love story, it’s the friendships she establishes with her various female students, Betty played by Kirsten Dunst (The Power of the Dog) and Joan played by Julia Stiles (10 Things I Hate About You) in particular, that cement this performance as beautifully dynamic and powerfully feminist. By the film’s end, we understand just how powerful a force female friendships can be in unearthing our collective strength and happiness.


Daisy Araújo in Mystic Pizza (1988)

Julia delights as free-spirited waitress Daisy Araújo in Donald Petrie‘s (Richie Rich) Mystic Pizza. Daisy is a small town, wild child from an immigrant family inclined on having fun always. Over the course of this story, Daisy falls for rich-kid, law school student Charles played by Adam Storke (Highway to Hell). The pair quickly realize that the world around them is filled with apprehensive folks, unsure that a union like theirs can last.

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This early performance shows one of the first examples of that raw fire Roberts regularly channels into the women she portrays. In Daisy, Roberts becomes a fiercely passionate adventure-seeker, willing to break the rules to find the happiness she knows she deserves in this lifetime.

Isabel Kelly in Stepmom (1998)

Stepmom by Chris Columbus (Home Alone) is a story about the dynamics of a relationship between two women, Jackie Harrison as played by Susan Sarandon (Thelma & Louise) and Isabel Kelly as played by Julia Roberts, the younger-woman archetype fiancé of Jackie’s ex-husband Luke Harrison, as played by Ed Harris (Westworld). Soon into the story, Jackie learns that the cancer she’s been silently battling has become terminal. She’s reluctant to let Isabel supersede her as mother to her two kids Anna Harrison played by Jena Malone (The Hunger Games) and Ben Harrison played by Liam Aiken (Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events). Over the course of the story, Isabel and Jackie negotiate their relationship, imperfectly challenging one another, and raising the question of what is the right way to be a mom?


Roberts as Isabel is this cool, big-city photographer. Her character’s journey becomes about accepting responsibility, but always with authenticity. While she’s not necessarily playing as much of an outcast woman as she has in, say Erin Brockovich, in Stepmom Roberts does wield her familiar strength of playing a woman empowered and committed to living life by her own rules.

Darby Shaw in The Pelican Brief (1993)

As law student Darby Shaw, Julia Roberts grounds this Alan J. Pakula (Sophie’s Choice) political thriller with a quiet determination. Not long after she dives deep, thoroughly researching a paper, Darby questions whether or not her extended effort was all for nothing. She soon learns that her instincts are spot on, leading her and Denzel Washington’s (Fences) character Gray Grantham down a mysterious path winding all the way up to the highest offices of the United States government.

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Here, we see this same quality of determination in Roberts, a layer she regularly reaches for when painting her characters to life. It’s the heart, though, that she couples with said determination, which pulls viewers into her orbit and makes empathizing with her characters’ journeys all the more effortless.

Barbara Fordham in August: Osage County (2013)

Roberts channels profound dysfunction as Barbara Fordham in John Wells‘s (Maid) August: Osage County. Barbara arrives back in Oklahoma with her husband Bill Fordham played by Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) and daughter Jean Fordham played by Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) to support her mother Violet Weston played by Meryl Streep (Don’t Look Up) and the rest of their family when their father goes missing. It’s not long before we feel the inescapable brokenness of Barbara’s relationships with those in her family of origin, and how those broken bonds have imprinted onto her connections with her husband and daughter.


The anger and angst Roberts channels in this role, going toe-to-toe with Meryl Streep are riveting. A profound departure from the Julia Roberts we get to see in her romantic comedies, as Barbara, Roberts unravels in a layered portrayal of the tolls of familial trauma. Through her performance, we see a breathtaking example of unhealthy patterning and witness how beyond difficult breaking those set patterns can be.

Vivian Ward in Pretty Woman (1990)

In Garry Marshall’s (Runaway Bride) modern-retelling of Pygmalion, Roberts plays Vivian Ward, a prostitute working Hollywood Boulevard the night that Edward Lewis, played by Richard Gere (Runaway Bride), needs her help driving a borrowed, manual transmission sports car. Edward hires Vivian to drive him and, charmed by Vivian, then hires her to be his girlfriend for a week as he attempts to close a pressing business deal. Similar to her role in Erin Brockovich, Vivian is yet another example of Roberts playing a character whom those around her deem lower class. Even so, through her enrapturing charisma, Vivian manages to fundamentally shift the world view of everyone around her.

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What is it that enables Roberts to so consistently win over our hearts portraying these underdog characters? Likely the unshakeable dignity she brings to each role. Roberts steps into inhabiting women like Erin and Vivian with profound respect and commitment to honoring their motivations. As a mother with Erin and a sex worker with Vivian, Roberts embodies these characters not just as heroes, but also as women, whose femininity is key to their power.


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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

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Review: SAMARITAN, A Sly Stallone Superhero Stumble

Hitting the three-quarter-century mark usually means a retirement home, a nursing facility, or if you’re lucky to be blessed with relatively good health and savings to match, living in a gated community in Arizona or Florida.

For Sylvester Stallone, however, it means something else entirely: starring in the first superhero-centered film of his decades-long career in the much-delayed Samaritan. Unfortunately for Stallone and the audience on the other side of the screen, the derivative, turgid, forgettable results won’t get mentioned in a career retrospective, let alone among the ever-expanding list of must-see entries in a genre already well past its peak.

For Stallone, however, it’s better late than never when it involves the superhero genre. Maybe in getting a taste of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with his walk-on role in the Guardians of the Galaxy sequel several years ago, Stallone thought anything Marvel can do, I can do even better (or just as good in the nebulous definition of the word).

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The property Stallone and his team found for him, Samaritan, a little-known graphic novel released by a small, almost negligible, publisher, certainly takes advantage of Stallone’s brute-force physicality and his often underrated talent for near-monosyllabic brooding (e.g., the Rambo series), but too often gives him to little do or say as the lone super-powered survivor, the so-called “Samaritan” of the title, of a lifelong rivalry with his brother, “Nemesis.” Two brothers entered a fire-ravaged building and while both were presumed dead, one brother did survive (Stallone’s Joe Smith, a garbageman by day, an appliance repairman by night).

In the Granite City of screenwriter Bragi F. Schut (Escape Room, Season of the Witch), the United States, and presumably the rest of the world, teeters on economic and political collapse, with a recession spiraling into a depression, steady gigs difficult, if not impossible, to obtain, and the city’s neighborhoods rocked by crime and violence. No one’s safe, not even 13-year-old Sam (Javon Walker), Joe’s neighbor.

When he’s not dodging bullies connected to a gang, he’s falling under the undue influence of Cyrus (Pilou Asbæk), a low-rent gang leader with an outsized ego and the conviction that he and only he can take on Nemesis’s mantle and along with that mantle, a hammer “forged in hate,” to orchestrate a Bane-like plan to plunge the city into chaos and become a wealthy power-broker in the process.

Schut’s woefully underwritten script takes a clumsy, haphazard approach to world-building, relying on a two-minute animated sequence to open Samaritan while a naive, worshipful Sam narrates Samaritan and Nemesis’s supposedly tragic, Cain and Abel-inspired backstory. Schut and director Julius Avery (Overlord) clumsily attempt to contrast Sam’s childish belief in messiah-like, superheroic saviors stepping in to save humanity from itself and its own worst excesses, but following that path leads to authoritarianism and fascism (ideas better, more thoroughly explored in Watchmen and The Boys).

While Sam continues to think otherwise, Stallone’s superhero, 25 years past his last, fatal encounter with his presumably deceased brother, obviously believes superheroes are the problem and not the solution (a somewhat reasonable position), but as Samaritan tracks Joe and Sam’s friendship, Sam giving Joe the son he never had, Joe giving Sam the father he lost to street violence well before the film’s opening scene, it gets closer and closer to embracing, if not outright endorsing Sam’s power fantasies, right through a literally and figuratively explosive ending. Might, as always, wins regardless of how righteous or justified the underlying action.

It’s what superhero audiences want, apparently, and what Samaritan uncritically delivers via a woefully under-rendered finale involving not just unconvincing CGI fire effects, but a videogame cut-scene quality Stallone in a late-film flashback sequence that’s meant to be subversively revelatory, but will instead lead to unintentional laughter for anyone who’s managed to sit the entirety of Samaritan’s one-hour and 40-minute running time.

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Samaritan is now streaming worldwide on Prime Video.

Samaritan

Cast
  • Sylvester Stallone
  • Javon ‘Wanna’ Walton
  • Pilou Asbæk

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Matt Shakman Is In Talks To Direct ‘Fantastic Four’

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According to a new report, Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct the upcoming MCU project, Fantastic Four. Marvel Studios has been very hush-hush regarding Fantastic Four to the point where no official announcements have been made other than the film’s release date. No casting news or literally anything other than rumors has been released regarding the project. We know that Fantastic Four is slated for release on November 8th, 2024, and will be a part of Marvel’s Phase 6. There are also rumors that the cast of the new Fantastic Four will be announced at the D23 Expo on September 9th.

Fantastic Four is still over two years from release, and we assume we will hear more news about the project in the coming months. However, the idea of the Fantastic Four has already been introduced into the MCU. John Krasinski played Reed Richards aka Mr. Fantastic in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The cameo was a huge deal for fans who have been waiting a long time for the Fantastic Four to enter the MCU. When Disney acquired Twenty Century Fox in 2019 we assumed that the Fox Marvel characters would eventually make their way into the MCU. It’s been 3 years and we already have had an X-Men and Fantastic Four cameo – even if they were from another universe.

Deadline is reporting that Wandavision’s Matt Shakman is in talks to direct Fantastic Four. Shakman served as the director for Wandavision and has had an extensive career. He directed two episodes of Game of Thrones and an episode of The Boys, and he had a long stint on It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. There is nothing official yet, but Deadline’s sources say that Shakman is currently in talks for the job and things are headed in the right direction.

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To be honest, I was a bit more excited when Jon Watts was set to direct. I’m sure Shakman is a good director, but Watts proved he could handle a tentpole superhero film with Spider-Man: Homecoming. Wandavision was good, but Watts’ style would have been perfect for Fantastic Four. The film is probably one of the most anticipated films in Marvel’s upcoming slate films and they need to find the best person they can to direct. Is that Matt Shakman? It could be, but whoever takes the job must realize that Marvel has a lot riding on this movie. The other Fantastic Four films were awful and fans deserve better. Hopefully, Marvel knocks it out of the park as they usually do. You can see for yourself when Fantastic Four hits theaters on November 8th, 2024.

Film Synopsis: One of Marvel’s most iconic families makes it to the big screen: the Fantastic Four.

Source: Deadline

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Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase Star in ‘Zombie Town’ Mystery Teen Romancer (Exclusive)

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Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase have entered Zombie Town, a mystery teen romancer based on author R.L. Stine’s book of the same name.

The indie, now shooting in Ontario, also stars Henry Czerny and co-teen leads Marlon Kazadi and Madi Monroe. The ensemble cast includes Scott Thompson and Bruce McCulloch of the Canadian comedy show Kids in the Hall.

Canadian animator Peter Lepeniotis will direct Zombie Town. Stine’s kid’s book sees a quiet town upended when 12-year-old Mike and his friend, Karen, see a horror movie called Zombie Town and unexpectedly see the title characters leap off the screen and chase them through the theater.

Zombie Town will premiere in U.S. theaters before streaming on Hulu and then ABC Australia in 2023.

“We are delighted to bring the pages of R.L. Stine’s Zombie Town to the screen and equally thrilled to be working with such an exceptional cast and crew on this production. A three-time Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award winner with book sales of over $500 million, R.L. Stine has a phenomenal track record of crafting stories that engage and entertain audiences,” John Gillespie, Trimuse Entertainment founder and executive producer, said in a statement.

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Executive producers are Trimuse Entertainment, Toonz Media Group, Lookout Entertainment, Viva Pictures and Sons of Anarchy actor Kim Coates.  

Paco Alvarez and Mark Holdom of Trimuse negotiated the deal to acquire the rights to Stine’s Zombie Town book.

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