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Appreciation: The dazzling range and mischievous humanity of Tom Wilkinson

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Appreciation: The dazzling range and mischievous humanity of Tom Wilkinson

At the risk of reducing an extraordinarily versatile actor to just one sweet spot, it must be noted that Tom Wilkinson had a particular genius for playing the gruff authority figure with a wry twist — a hidden streak of zany rebellion. Again and again, this marvelous English performer, who died on Saturday at the age of 75, located the comedy as well as the gravity in a world-weary visage. That handsome but haggard Everyman frown, which proved so dramatically commanding in films like “In the Bedroom” (2001) and “Michael Clayton” (2007), so often concealed a twinkle of irony, a spark of invigorating mischief.

In “Shakespeare in Love” (1998), he’s a menacing Elizabethan-era moneylender who gets caught up in all the let’s-put-on-a-show fervor; eventually he discovers, to his and our delight, an unexpected talent for stage acting. (Wilkinson is so good here, he actually makes you believe he wasn’t a theater veteran.) And it’s no wonder he was so perfectly cast as the mad but mild-mannered doctor in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” (2004), the one who devises a ridiculously elaborate procedure that erases painful memories. (“Can it cause brain damage?” a wary patient asks, to which Wilkinson replies, with perfect deadpan drollery: “Well, technically, it is brain damage.”)

His flair for the understated and absurd found a perfect, emblematic image in Tony Gilroy’s superb conspiracy thriller “Michael Clayton,” in which Wilkinson plays Arthur Edens, a high-powered corporate attorney who’s gone dangerously off-message (and off-meds). A shot of Edens walking down an alley, carrying a dozen-plus baguettes under his arm, was reposted en masse Saturday after news of the actor’s death spread on social media.

In the context of the movie, the scene is both hilarious and troubling: Here’s a man carb-loading his way to mental oblivion. But it’s also just one aspect of one of Wilkinson’s very best performances, one that turned “I am Shiva, the god of death!” into a movie line for the ages and earned him the second of two Oscar nominations. Edens grabs you from the movie’s opening scenes with a furious, electrifying monologue, a rant against the corporate powers he has until recently served. Wilkinson isn’t even visible onscreen in these moments, but with his voice alone — high, cold, dripping with bitter rage — he has you fully in his grip. Edens has discovered his conscience at precisely the same moment he’s lost his grip on reality, and we hear a strange commingling of triumph and defeat.

Of such dynamic shifts and extremes, Wilkinson’s career was made. He could veer from affable to prickly, from nebbishy to charismatic. He was game to don an Italian accent to play the Gotham City mobster Carmine Falcone in “Batman Begins” (2005), though he was more at home as a London crime boss in Guy Ritchie’s “Rocknrolla,” threatening his enemies with death by crayfish. He had a funny, flamboyant streak, whether falling to a villain’s proper death in “Rush Hour” or engaging in some slow-motion fisticuffs with Paul Giamatti in Gilroy’s romantic-comedy thriller “Duplicity.” (That movie was an inspired reunion for the two actors after their HBO miniseries “John Adams,” which earned Wilkinson an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his supporting turn as Benjamin Franklin.)

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Wilkinson was peerless at doing patrician eloquence: a sneering businessman in “The Ghost and the Darkness,” a haughty scientific mind in “The Governess.” And he brought a crafty mix of decency and pragmatism to the role of President Lyndon B. Johnson in Ava DuVernay’s civil rights drama “Selma” (2014), a shrewd characterization that drew criticism from those who’d expected not a depiction of Johnson so much as a deification.

But Wilkinson was equally persuasive as a working-class grumbler, which is what made him such a terrific secret weapon in the hit 1997 comedy “The Full Monty.” His character, Gerald, is a scowling former steelworker who, after some initial reluctance, throws himself into his friends’ amateur-strip-show shenanigans with undisguised gusto. To this day, I can’t hear Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” without flashing back on the giddy sight of Wilkinson standing in a job-center line, discreetly shaking, thrusting and finally twirling his way to the front of the queue. Hidden beneath that rumpled overcoat and red sweater vest, his performance joyously proclaims, is the soul of a natural-born dancer.

Although Wilkinson had already registered in movies like “In the Name of the Father” (1993), “Priest” (1994) and “Sense and Sensibility” (1995), “The Full Monty” earned him a British Academy Film Award for supporting actor and catapulted him to greater attention from audiences and filmmakers outside the U.K. Four years later, he received his first Oscar nomination for his career-crowning performance in Todd Field’s searing drama “In the Bedroom.” In that movie, Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek give titanic performances as Tom and Ruth Fowler, a middle-aged New England couple grieving, and seeking justice for, their murdered son. Tom is the more easygoing, reasonable-minded spouse, the one who clings in vain to normalcy even after the unthinkable has happened. Spacek has the showier role as the seething, vengeful Ruth, a lobster fisherman’s Lady Macbeth.

The scene of Spacek smashing a plate to the floor became a representative image of the movie and, a bit unfairly, an oft-imitated bit of shorthand for Oscar-clip histrionics. To watch that scene again in its entirety, and with its dramatic context fully restored, is to appreciate how contrapuntally synced Spacek and Wilkinson are, how precisely they capture the entrenched rhythms of a long-married couple. And it’s Wilkinson’s groundedness, his slow-cracking composure, that gives Spacek the emotional ballast she needs; without him, her fury couldn’t erupt or resonate with such spectacular force.

I wish more lead roles of that stature had awaited Wilkinson after “In the Bedroom.” Even so, a single performance this good never fully exhausts its riches, even after multiple viewings. So much of the acting he does in Field’s film is subtle to the point of subterranean: There’s the quiet pleading in his expression as he asks a district attorney for help, the defeated stoop of his shoulders as he prepares to give his wife the worst news of their lives. For those of us who loved this actor’s work, there was a particular poignancy to see words fail him for once, this actor of Shakespearean grandiloquence, tamping down his natural gift for language to express a deeper, more sorrowful truth.

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

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Roll On 18 Wheeler: Errol Sack’s ‘TRUCKER’ (2026) – Movie Review – PopHorror

I am a sucker for all those straight-to-video slasher movies from the 90’s; there was just a certain point where you knew the acting was terrible, however, it made you fall in love. I can definitely remember scanning the video store sections for all the different horror movies I could. All those movies had laughable names and boom mics accidentally getting in the frame. Trucker seems like a child of all those old dreams, because it is.

Let’s get into the review.

Synopsis

When a group of reckless teens cause an accident swroe to never speak of it.  The father is reescued by a strange man. from the wreckage and nursed back to health by a mysterious old man. When the group agrees to visit the accident scene, they meet their match from a strange masked trucker and all his toys with revenge on his mind.

Roll on 18 Wheleer

Trucker is what you would imagine: a movie about a psychotic trucker chasing you. We have seen it many, many times. What makes the film so different is its homage to bad movies but good ideas. I don’t mean in a negative way. When you think of a slasher movie, it’s not very complicated; as a matter of fact, it takes five minutes to piece the film together. This is so simple and childlike, and I absolutely love it. Trucker gave us something a little different, not too gory, bad CGI fire, I mean, this is all we old schlock horror fans want. Trucker is the type of film that you expect from a Tubi Original, on speed. However, I would take this over any Tubi Original.

I found some parts that were definitely a shout-out to the slasher humor from all those movies. Another good point that made the film shine was the sets. I guess what I can say is the film is everything Joy Ride should have been. While most modern slashers are trying to recreate the 1980s, the film stands out with its love for those unloved 1990’s horror films. While most see Joyride, you are extremely mistaken, my friend; you will enjoy this film much more.

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In The End

In the end, I enjoyed the entire film. At first, I saw it listed as an action thriller; I was pleasantly surprised, and Trucker pulled at my heart strings, enveloping me in its comfort from a long-forgotten time in horror. It’s a nostalgic blast for me, thinking back to that time, my friends, my youth, and finding my new home. Horror fans are split down the middle: from serial-killer clowns (my side) to elevated horror, where an artist paints a forty-thousand-year-old demon that chases them around an upper-class studio apartment. I say that a lot, but it’s the best way to describe some things.

The entire movie had me cheering while all the people I hated suffered dire consequences for their actions. It’s the same old story done in a way that we rabid fans could drool over, and it worked. In all the bad in the world today, and my only hope for the future is the soon-to-end Terrifier franchise. However, the direction was a recipe to succeed with 40+ year old horror fans like me. I see the film as a hope for tomorrow, leading us into a new era.

Trucker is set to release on March 10th, 2026

 

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

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Review: In ‘American Classic,’ Kevin Kline and Laura Linney deliver a love letter to theater

The lovely, funny “American Classic,” premiering Sunday on MGM+, is a love letter to theater, community and community theater. Kevin Kline plays Richard Bean, a narcissistic stage actor. He’s famous enough to be opening on Broadway in “King Lear,” but he has to be pushed onstage and is forgetting lines. After he drunkenly assails a hostile New York Times critic — caught on video, of course — he’s suspended from the play, and his agent (Tony Shalhoub) advises him to get out of town and lay low until the heat’s off, as they used to say in the gangster movies.

Learning that his mother (Jane Alexander, acting royalty, in film clips) has died, Richard heads back to his small Pennsylvania hometown, where his family — all actors, like the Barrymores, but no longer acting — owns a once-celebrated theater. To Richard’s horror, it has, for want of income, become a dinner theater, hosting touring productions of “Nunsense” and “Forever Plaid” instead of the great stage works on which he cut his teeth.

Brother Jon (Jon Tenney), running the kitchen at the theater, is married to Kristen (Laura Linney), Richard’s onetime acting partner, who dated him before her marriage; now she’s the mayor. Their teenage daughter, Miranda (Nell Verlaque) — a name from Shakespeare — does want to act and move to New York, as her mother had before her, but is afraid to tell her parents. Richard’s father, Linus (Len Cariou), is suffering from dementia, though not to the point he won’t actively contribute to the action; every day he comes out again as gay.

Across the eight-episode series, things move from the ridiculous to the sublime. Richard’s attempt to stage his mother’s funeral, with her coffin being lowered from the ceiling, while “Also sprach Zarathustra” plays and smoke billows toward the audience, fortunately comes to naught; but he announces at the ceremony that he’ll direct a production of Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play “Our Town” at the theater, to “restore the soul of this town.” (His big idea is to ignore Wilder’s stage directions, which ask for no curtain, no set and few props, with a “realistic version,” featuring a working soda fountain, rain effects and a horse.) Fate will have other plans for this, and not to give away what in any case should be obvious, the title of the play will also become its ethos, with a cast of amateurs, including Miranda’s jealous boyfriend, Randall (Ajay Friese), and ordinary people standing in for the ordinary people of Wilder’s Grover’s Corners.

The series has a comfortable, cushiony feeling; it’s the sort of show that could have been made as a film in the 1990s, and in which Kline could have starred as easily in his 40s as in his 70s; it has the same relation to reality as “Dave,” in which he played a good-hearted ordinary Joe who takes the place of a lookalike U.S. president. The town is essentially a sunny place, full of mostly sunny people, to all appearances, a typical comedy hamlet. But we’re told it’s distressed, and Mayor Kristen is in transactional cahoots with developer Connor Boyle (Billy Carter), who wants clearance to build a casino on the site of a landmark hotel. (Much of the plot is driven by money — needing it, trading for it, leaving it, losing it.) He also wants his heavily accented, bombshell Russian girlfriend, Nadia (Elise Kibler), to have a part in “Our Town.”

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As in the great Canadian comedy “Slings & Arrows,” set at a Shakespeare Festival outside of Toronto, themes and moments and speeches from the play being performed are echoed in the lives of the performers, while the viewer experiences the double magic of watching a fine actor playing an actor playing a part. Kline, of course, is himself an American classic, with a long stage and screen career that encompasses classical drama, romantic and musical comedy and cartoon voiceovers; the series makes room for Richard to perform soliloquies from “Hamlet” and “Henry V,” parts Klein has played onstage. He brings out the sweetness latent in Richard. Linney, who played against her sweetheart image in “Ozark,” is happily back on less deadly ground (though she’s tense and drinks a little). Tenney, who was sweet and funny on “The Closer,” and who we don’t see enough of these days, is sweeter and funnier here, and gets to sing. (All the Beans will sing, except for Linus.)

As a comedy, it is often predicable — you know that things will work out, and some major plot points are as good as inevitable — but it’s the good sort of predictability, where you get what you came for, where you hear the words you want to hear, ones you could never have written yourself. “American Classic” is not out to challenge your world view in any way but wants only to confirm your feelings and in doing so amplify them. Shock effects are fine in their place — and to be sure there are major twists in the plot — but there is a certain release when the thing you’re ready to have happen, happens, whether it brings laughter or tears. Either is welcome.

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

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‘Scream 7’ Review: Ghostface Trades His Metallic Knife for Plastic in Bloody Embarrassing Slasher Sequel

It’s funny how this film is marketed as the first Scream movie in IMAX, yet it’s their sloppiest work to date. Williamson accomplishes two decent kills. My praise goes to the prosthetic team and gore above anything else. The filmmaking is amateurish, lacking any of the tension build and innovation in set pieces like the Radio Silence or Craven entries. Many slasher sequences consist of terribly spliced editing and incomprehensible camera movement. There was a person at my screening asking if one of the Ghostfaces was killed. I responded, “Yeah, they were shot in the head; you just couldn’t see it because the filmmaking is so damn unintelligible.” 

Really, Spyglass? This is the best you can do to “damage control” your series that was perfectly fine?

I’m getting comments from morons right now telling me that I’m biased for speaking “politically” about this movie. Fuck you! This poorly made, bland, and franchise-worst entry is a byproduct of political cowardice.

The production company was so adamant about silencing their outspoken star, who simply stated that she’s against the killing of Palestinian people by an evil totalitarian regime, that they deliberately fired her, conflating her comments to “anti-semintism,” when, and if you read what she said exactly, it wasn’t. Only to reconstruct the buildup made in her arc and settle on a nonsensical, manufactured, nostalgia-based slop fest to appeal to fans who lack genuine film taste in big 2026. To add insult to injury, this movie actively takes potshots at those predecessors, perhaps out of pettiness that Williamson didn’t pen them or a mean-spirited middle finger to the star the studio fired. Truly, fuck you. Take the Barrera aspect out of this, which is still impossible, and Scream 7 is a lazy, sloppy, ill-conceived, no-vision, enshittification of Scream and a bloody embarrassment to the franchise. It took a real, morally upright actress to make Ghostface’s knife go from metal to plastic. 

FINAL STATEMENT

You either die a Scream or live long enough to see yourself become a Stab.

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