Movies like Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close are difficult to review.  On the one hand, part of me wants to rip Stephen Daldry’s film to shreds and call it a manipulative, corny, over-the-top, Oscar-seeking mess.  But the other part of me wants to drop the cynicism and enjoy the heartfelt emotional journey for what it aspires to be: a film that attempts to cope with the aftershocks of 9/11, and mourn those we lost in the fire.

Watching Extremely Loud on Blu-ray over the weekend, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it.  While not exactly the masterpiece it thinks it is, Daldry’s film at least sidesteps the problems I had with the director’s previous efforts, especially the overtly saccharine The Reader and the morbid, depressing The Hours – both of which tried to do too much and therefore lacked focus.  Hit the jump for my review.

We’ve got some shuffling of release dates for two Warner Bros. distributions and a new release date for one of our favorite films from this year’s Sundance.  Here’s a glance:

• Warner Bros. pushes back The Seventh Son from February 15th, 2013 to October 18th, 2013.
• Another Warner Bros. film, Beautiful Creatures, has taken Seventh Son’s place by moving back two weeks to open on February 15th, 2013.
• Starring Frank Langella, James Marsden, Liv Tyler, Susan Sarandon and a robot (voiced by Peter Sarsgaard), Robot and Frank will open on August 24th of this year.

Hit the jump for more on each film.

At the newly up-and-running production blog for Ender’s Game, the producers have teased a glimpse of Ender’s world at the Battle School and have promised us more to come in the weeks ahead. If that’s not enough to whet your appetite, producer Roberto Orci also dropped a few comments in response to fans’ fears about how the filmmakers were treating the source material and questions about potential sequels as well as author Orson Scott Card’s involvement in the project. Ender’s Game, based on the award-winning novel by Card, follows a young student training in military school who may be the last hope for humanity in a futuristic war against a hostile alien race. The movie, directed by Gavin Hood, stars Asa Butterfield, Abigail Breslin, Harrison Ford, Ben Kingsley, Viola Davis and Hailee Steinfeld. Fans will definitely want to hit the jump to check out the new photo and to see what Orci had to say.

Director Paris Barclay (Glee) and Oscar-nominated actress Viola Davis (The Help) are looking to lend their talents to a biopic concerning the life of Congresswoman Barbara Jordan. Jordan holds the distinction of being the first African American elected to the Texas Senate and the first Southern black female elected to the United States House of Representatives. The posthumous pic will center on Jordan’s life from her early days in a poor Houston neighborhood to her rise through the political ranks. Davis will star and produce the picture through her and husband Julius Tennon’s JuVee banner, alongside Barclay, Shelly Glasser and Diane Nabatoff. Glasser and Nabatoff had acquired the rights to the biography, “Babara Jordon: American Hero” by Mary Beth Rogers. Hit the jump for more.

Two-time Oscar-winner Emma Thompson (Sense and Sensibility) is the latest to join Beautiful Creatures, a supernatural love story based on the first novel in a best-selling series. Thompson will join Academy Award-nominee Viola Davis (The Help), as well as Jack O’Connell (Eden Lake) and newcomer Alice Englert. Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You) will direct the adaptation from the stories written by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl.

In other casting news, Jenna Fischer (The Office) and Rita Wilson (Sleepless in Seattle) have joined the indie drama, Kiss Me, directed by Jeff Probst (“Survivor”). The coming-of-age tale follows a teen with scoliosis as she navigates adolescent relationships. Hit the jump for more on both projects.

It’s a good day to be a cast member of The Help. We’ve already reported a couple of high-profile casting stories regarding Octavia Spencer and Jessica Chastain, and now the third Oscar-nominated actress from The Help has booked not one, but two new gigs. Best Actress nominee Viola Davis is set as the lead in Beautiful Creatures, and will take a supporting role in Ender’s Game. Directed by Richard LaGravenese (P.S. I Love You), the film is an adaptation of the novel by Margaret Stohl and Kami Garcia and centers on two star-crossed teens who uncover dark secrets about their families, their history and their town. Davis will play a seer who looks after the boy and his father after the boy’s death. Beautiful Creatures is the first in a series of novels, and Warner Bros. is hoping that the film will kick off a franchise.

Hit the jump for more, including the addition of Davis to the increasingly impressive ensemble for Ender’s Game.

The 2012 Screen Actors Guild Award winners were announced tonight, and The Help took home the top film prize, “Outstanding Performance By A Cast In A Motion Picture”.  The drama also took home awards for Best Actress (Viola Davis) and Best Supporting Actress (Octavia Spencer).  If you think that’s no big deal in terms of affecting the Oscar race, I have one word for you: Crash.  Granted, The Help didn’t even pick up an Oscar nomination for Best Director, but actors make up the largest block of Academy voters (25 percent).  And as we’ve seen, actors really like movies that make us think we’ve defeated racism, which we totally have.  That’s why all African-American actors pull in huge salaries.  Actors like Will Smith and…Will Smith.  I wouldn’t put The Help ahead of The Artist just yet, but Davis and Spencer should now be considered serious contenders in their respective catagories (Spencer is almost at a lock at this point).

The nominations for the 84th Annual Academy Awards have finally been unveiled. Many of the categories have fallen in line just as most have predicted (I fared alright with my predictions, but not great), with Hugo scoring 11 nods, followed closely by The Artist with 10. The biggest surprises are War Horse and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close getting in for Best Picture, the exclusion of The Adventures of Tintin from Best Animated Feature, and The Tree of Life nabbing Best Picture and Best Director nods (hooray!). On the snub side of things, despite landing the most precursor critics awards of any other actor in the race thus far, Albert Brooks was denied a Best Supporting Actor nod for his stellar work in Drive (boo). Additionally, Tilda Swinton was overlooked for giving the best performance of the year in We Need to Talk About Kevin, and AMPAS has no love for Michael Fassbender‘s haunting work in Shame.

There’s still plenty to be happy about, as Gary Oldman has his first ever Oscar Nomination (yes, that’s right) and Melissa McCarthy is a Best Supporting Actress nominee. Hit the jump to check out the full list of nominees. The 84th Academy Awards will be presented by Billy Crystal on February 26th.

As I’ve been covering awards season pretty extensively here on the site over the past few months, I figured it would be appropriate to (foolishly) try to predict the upcoming Oscar nominations. It’s been a fairly tame year, as a few frontrunners were singled out early in the race and have held their ground throughout the grueling awards season. We haven’t been without a few surprises, as Steven Spielberg’s War Horse took a massive tumble following snubs from most of the major guilds, and David Fincher has surged back into the race bringing his adaptation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with him.

Though there are plenty of safe bets when it comes to the 2012 Oscar nominations, there are still a few wildcards and tricky categories. I’ve put on my prognosticating cap (those interested can purchase one of these nifty hats at your local Target) and compiled a list of who and what I think will make the cut. Hit the jump to see how I think the nods will stack up when they’re announced on January 24th.

With each passing awards ceremony, it’s looking more and more likely that we’re in for a fairly boring/predictable Oscars this year. The Artist continues to dominate the precursor ceremonies as it took home the Best Picture and Best Director prize at the Critics Choice Awards. On the acting side of things, George Clooney was named Best Actor for his work in The Descendants, and Viola Davis won Best Actress for The Help. The Artist is our clear frontrunner headed towards Oscar night, and I don’t really think anything else will be able to take it down. I can’t really complain about any of the acting wins, though for what it’s worth I think Brad Pitt gave the best performance of the year in Moneyball.

Elsewhere, Drive won Best Action Movie (though it’s really a drama) Bridesmaids won Best Comedy, and Rango was named Best Animated Feature. Hit the jump to see the full list of winners.

A large batch of new images from the upcoming drama Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close has been released. The film is based on the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer and tells the story of a nine-year-old boy who sets out to find the lock that fits a key left to him by his father, who perished in the 9/11 attacks. I’m a big fan of the book so I’ve been looking forward to this one for quite a while. The cast is great and director Stephen Daldry has a pretty nifty track record, so I’m hoping everything comes together well. The pic has already started screening, but it’s under a strict embargo after the whole Girl with the Dragon Tattoo fiasco (plus Scott Rudin is also the producer of Extremely Loud).

Hit the jump to check out the images. The film stars Thomas Horn, Sandra Bullock, Tom Hanks, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, Jeffrey Wright, and John Goodman. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close opens in limited release on December 25th, then expands nationwide on January 20th.

I think there’s something to be said for coming to your own conclusions. Case in point: I may currently be at odds with 77% of the Rotten Tomatoes critic community when I say this, but I found The Sitter to be worthy of my box office dollars. Was it the best comedy I’ve ever seen? Not even close. Was it the best comedy I’ve seen in the past six months? Nope. That said, I had been looking forward to the pic over the course of covering it for this site. When the critical negativity began pouring in, I could have easily passed on the film as a result (something I’ve been guilty of in the past). Instead, I decided to check it out and I laughed (quite a bit, actually). So, what’s the moral of my story? If you want to see a movie, go see it. Don’t let poor reviews detour you from something you think you may enjoy. Use reviews as a foundation for healthy debate rather than as an excuse to not give something a chance because someone else didn’t like it.

All ranting aside, in this week’s “Top 5″ installment, you’ll be able to read all about The Dark Knight Rises and its IMAX prologue, viral campaign, and potential IMAX footage runtime. You can also see George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Rooney Mara and more portraying classic movie “villains” of their choice, get up to date on Michael Bay potentially returning to direct Transformers 4, Daniel Craig discussing the script problems that plagued Quantum of Solace, and producer Kathleen Kennedy talking Jurassic Park 4, Tintin, Lincoln, and Robopocalypse. Check out a brief recap and link to each after the jump.

Well here’s one of the coolest stories you’ll see all week. A number of fantastic actors have gotten together to recreate some of the greatest villains in movie history. Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Rooney Mara, Ryan Gosling, Gary Oldman, Michael Shannon, Jessica Chastain, and many more are all part of director Alex Prager’s “Touch of Evil” project. The video gallery features each performer uniquely taking on the persona of an iconic villain.

Some of the characters are deep cuts, with Pitt as Henry Spencer from Eraserhead, Clooney as Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty, Mara as Alex from A Clockwork Orange, and Oldman genuinely unrecognizable as the ventriloquist dummy from Magic. Other highlights include Viola Davis channeling Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Michael Shannon as Wall Street’s Gordon Gecko. It appears that the actors chose the characters themselves, which makes this all the more impressive. Hit the jump to check out the images.

Yesterday we unveiled our picks for the top contenders in the Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress categories for the upcoming 84th Academy Awards. Today, we’re taking on Best Actor and Best Actress. Though it’s still relatively early in the race, we’ve got some surefire contenders and a couple of clear frontrunners for the top acting categories. In addition to Academy darlings like George Clooney and Meryl Streep, we’ve seen some extraordinary performances from relative newcomers likes Elizabeth Olsen and Michael Fassbender. As I stressed yesterday, it’s still pretty early so things can definitely change between now and February, but there are certainly some clear frontrunners in these two races already. Hit the jump to see find out how everyone stacks up.

Movies that take place during the Civil Rights era have become their own genre and one that sometimes diminishes the characters and their stories by making everyone into a hero, a villain, or a martyr.  The Help tries to expand those roles by showing that not all southern white people in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi are vile racists, not all black people are born courageous activists, and that while the battle lines were clearly defined as right and wrong, some people had to do some soul-searching to find where they stood.  The movie stumbles when it forgets to shade its characters and by being too faithful to the book at the expense of effectively translating the story to the screen.  But despite these missteps, The Help manages to deliver some powerful emotional moments due in large part to yet another tremendous performance from Viola Davis.