After plugging Transformers: The Last Knight (Paramount, 6.23) at Cinemacon, Mark Wahlberg paid a visit to the Las Vegas Wahlburgers, which is right next to my Bally’s hotel. I just bought a burger there — pretty good. The burgeoning fast-food chain is co-owned by three Wahlberg brothers — Paul (chef & general honcho), Donnie and Mark. It’s also a reality series on A&E. No Wahlburgers in Los Angeles yet.

It’s not the humans per se who will suffer a final defeat at the finale of War of the Planet of the Apes, but an army of aggressive dicks led by Woody Harrelson‘s Trump-like Colonel. Which of course makes the Ape victory palatable to the likes of you and me. Matt Reeves is a sharp, quality-level filmmaker, and this trilogy finale, obviously, is going to be a strong, well-made film.

Finely shaped and timed as this trailer is, it played a helluva lot better on the huge screen inside the 4000-seat Caesar’s Palace Collisseum than it does right now on my Macbook Air.

By the way: I felt extra-thrilled when a brief clip from John Huston‘s The Maltese Falcon was shown one or two days ago. As great as this 1941 classic looks when I watch the Bluray seems when I watch it on my 65″ 4K screen, seeing it in the big Collisseum screen was a lot better. I’d pay serious money to watch it on a huge super-screen with super-amped sound some day.

I hadn’t paid any attention to Wonder (Lionsgate, 11.17), a delicate family drama in the vein of Peter Bogdanovich‘s Mask, until today. But now I’m on it, and for good reason.

Based on three relatively recent novels by R.J. Palacio, it’s about the journey of a young kid with a facial deformity (Jacob Tremblay) as he acclimates to school, and how his parents (Julia Roberts, Owen Wilson) and extended family help him along.

Owen Wilson, Julia Roberts during filming of Wonder.

Jacon Tremblay

This kind of story can be cloying or worse in the wrong hands, but I was sensing from the brief trailer shown today that director Steven Chbosky (The Perks of Being A Wallflower) has handled things with restraint and the right kind of emphasis. Maybe.

Three things got my attention. One, it’s obviously going to be an emotionally affecting drama — I could feel the pangs right away. Two, a Lionsgate spokesperson mentioned that Wonder has gotten the highest test scores of any Lionsgate film ever. And three, Wonder‘s original release date, 4.7.17, was changed last February to 11.17, which means Lionsgate knows it has the Oscar nuts.

Who knows how good it’ll turn out to actually be, but I can almost guarantee you that the Academy members who nominated Garth Davis‘s heart-tugging Lion for six Oscars (including Best Picture) are going to give it up for Wonder.

I’ve never been much for this kind of slam-and-scream horror film, much less for the scary literature of Stephen King. But I have to admit that the red balloon is spooky. Because it drops the Alka Seltzer into the water.

I’ve been told by a seasoned, trustworthy guy who’s seen The Book of Henry that this Colin Trevorrow-directed film, which wrapped in November 2015, is a problem. I’m sorry. I have no dog in this. Just saying.

David Michod and Brad Pitt‘s War Machine looks and sounds engaging as shit. The Netflix press release calls it “absurdist” and “pitch-black.” Pitt’s General Glenn McMahon – Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Ben Kingsley as former Afghanistan president Hamid Karazi…perfect! With Emory Cohen, Topher Grace, Anthony Michael Hall, Will Poulter, Lakeith Stanfield, Meg Tilly, Tilda Swinton. “We’re not here to win — we’re here to clean up the mess.” War Machine pops on 5.26.17.

Most Americans are total rubes when it comes to respecting pronunications of foreign last names. A year and a half ago I riffed about the yokel way to pronounce the last name of Melissa “Supergirl” Benoist. Semi-cultivated types pronounce this French-origin name as “Ben-whah” while dogpatch Americans pronounce it “Ben-oh-ist” with Benoist herself pronouncing it “Ben-OYST.”

Now a “new” mispronunication has surfaced — the last name of Marvel Films honcho Kevin Feige. New to me, that is. For the last ten-plus years I’ve been saying “fayge” or “feejzh” (like the first syllable in leisure), but yesterday a Cinemacon moderator pronounced it “Fay-gee.” I jumped in my seat…what?

Feige is a German term for fig, the purple-colored tree fruit. Germans would pronounce this “Fye-guh“, which is easily within the realm of American capability.

But it also resembles the medieval term “liege” (as in “my liege”, which is pronounced like the first syllable of “leisure” and which means “my superior”) as well as the Belgian city of Liege, which is pronounced “Lee-ayge.” So for a while there I was saying “fayge” or “feejzh” — a one-syllable, soft-g pronunication. Because Feige’s last name merely reverses the order of the first two vowels (e-i instead of i-e).

But throw Feige’s name into the American cultural meat-grinder and it becomes fay-gee, or almost the same as Weegee, the New York tabloid photographer. Nobody comes up with more dumbshit-sounding pronunciations than Americans…nobody.