Yesterday it was Batman’s time in the spotlight. Today, it’s Superman. Zack Snyder has dropped another character-specific teaser for his upcoming cut of Justice League on HBO Max, this one focused on the Man of Steel. Once again, there’s some never-before-seen footage here so just be wary if you want to know as little as possible going in on March 18th.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League puts increased focus on the return of Superman, following his death in Batman v Superman. While the black costume, which is a suit designed to help him regenerate powers faster, was always something Snyder wanted, Warner Bros. fought him on it. Ultimately, Snyder decided to leave it out but shot in a way that it could be colorized black if circumstances arose. Now that he’s been given free reign to make the movie he always wanted, the black suit is back.
There’s still a couple of weeks until the film’s release, and we know that each member of the team will be getting similar teasers. Is Wonder Woman next?
As far as acting debuts go, ripping up animatronic monsters alongside Nicolas Cage is a pretty good way to start. While Willy’s Wonderland isn’t the first role for rising-star Emily Tosta, it does mark her first feature film role. In the instant cult favorite, she plays Liv, a badass teen who makes it her mission to destroy the demonic animatronics at Willy’s Wonderland, joining Cage’s mysterious Janitor.
Before now, Tosta was probably best known for her starring role in the Party of Five remake series, but also for her continued role as Leticia in the series Mayans M.C.
With so much going for her, Tosta has a bright future ahead. I was fortunate enough to spend a few minutes talking with her about Willy’s Wonderland, her experiences on her first major film role, and what it was like to kick ass alongside Nicolas Cage.
You can check out my review of Willy’s Wonderlandhere, and my interview with Tosta below!
Louis Fugain (Gregoire Ludig) was going about his life when he stumbled across a body in Keep An Eye Out. It started out as a simple pedestrian night just like any other but ended up being far from it. Little did he know that reporting the body to the police would lead to him becoming the main suspect! Now the quirky Le Commissaire Buron (Benoit Poelvoorde) is on the case and interrogating Fugain. Buron likes to work at night, all night if need be, and has a hungry Fugain in for questioning. As the two men go back and forth, the peculiar Buron feels something is amiss – but what could it be?
Keep An Eye Out is driven purely through dialogue. It couldn’t be more important that the script and the actor’s rose to this challenge. Luckily for writer/director Quentin Dupieux – Poelvoorde, Ludig, and the rest of the cast gave his excellent script justice. There are only a few characters in Keep An Eye Out and the film really focuses on a conversation between the two leads. Their chemistry is fantastic, and it truly looks like they had a joy making the film. The way they bicker with each other is entirely believable and the facial expressions, especially from Poelvoorde, are spot on. Poelvoorde’s Buron joins a long line of ridiculous detectives, one of the most recognizable being another French detective in Clouseau. Poelvoorde does such a great job as Buron that I wouldn’t hesitate to watch another film chronicling his exploits.
Keep An Eye Out is quite absurd, but in a good way. It has the feel of a Saturday Night Live sketch combined with a script playing with language reminiscent of Airplane!. Dupieux is able to take only a couple of settings, a very limited cast, and no shiny bells or whistles – and make a fun and memorable experience. Keep An Eye Out does leave you scratching your head at times, but that fits perfectly with the atmosphere Dupieux creates. Not all of it is supposed to make sense, and that’s okay. Dupieux has many little touches throughout – manipulating flashbacks, adding absurdities to characters to make them stick in your mind. By adding these, Dupieux is able to make a unique and refreshing product. In a world of sequels and remakes, Keep An Eye Out stands out and is absolutely worth a watch (and read).
Two decades after Steven Soderbergh’s Traffic took a macro look at the war on drugs, there’s a renewed interest by Hollywood in exploring the latest drug epidemic; opioids. While there have been multiple films over the last few months tackling this ongoing issue, it’s Nicholas Jarecki’s Crisis that looks at it from many different angles, from the streets to the homes and to the boardrooms.
Written and directed by Jarecki, Crisis follows multiple storylines surrounding the opioid epidemic, looking at how corporate corruption intersects with drug traffickers, federal agents, scientists, and the addict who may have gotten hooked through no fault of their own. Jarecki assembled a tremendous cast that includes Armie Hammer, Evangeline Lilly, and Oscar winner Gary Oldman.
I’ve been a fan of Jarecki since before his breakthrough film, 2012’s financial world thriller Arbitrage. He sortof had to angle his way into the business, and did so by writing a book about other directors, one of which was Oscar-winning filmmaker James Toback. Jarecki made his directorial debut on 2005’s The Outsider, which was about Toback’s 12-day filming of When Will I Be Loved.
Crisis marks Jarecki’s first film in nearly a decade, but it’s also the biggest project of his career, one that combines aspects from many different genres. In my interview with Jarecki, we talked about the long wait between films, his interest in wanting to tell such an all-encompassing story about the opioid crisis, and the kind of help he needed in putting such a stunning ensemble together. Here’s a hint: start with Gary Oldman and the rest shall follow.
Crisis is available in theaters and digital now. Check out my review here and the interview with Jarecki below!
There are millions of people in the world who stutter when they speak. I’ll never forget that moment when President Joe Biden, who himself overcame a stuttering problem, helped a young boy who suffers from the same affliction. My own father dealt with it well into adulthood. The stigma that it causes can have a severe impact on one’s self-confidence, but the upcoming doc My Beautiful Stutter will focus on one group dedicated to stopping that from an early age.
Directed by Ryan Gielen (The Graduates), My Beautiful Stutter“follows five kids who stutter, ages 9 to 18, from all over the United States and all walks of life, who, after experiencing a lifetime of bullying and stigmatization, meet other children who stutter at an interactive arts-based program, The Stuttering Association for the Young, based in New York City. Their journey to SAY find some close to suicide, others withdrawn and fearful, exhausted and defeated from failed fluency training, societal pressures to not stutter or the decision to remain silent. Over the course of a year we witness first hand the incredible transformation that happens when these young people of wildly different backgrounds experience for the first time the revolutionary idea at the heart of SAY: that it’s okay to stutter.”
The film has some serious supporters, too, with Mariska Hargitay and Paul Rudd as exec-producers. This is the kind of heartwarming, uplifting message I think we all can get behind, and with Biden in office right now more focus on getting help to those who stutter is a good thing.
My Beautiful Stutter hits Discovery+ on March 11th.
Man, it feels like only yesterday I was reviewing the first three WandaVision episodes and complaining that it was too slow and leaned too hard on sitcom tropes rather than pushing forward a story.
I was an impatient idiot, who forgot to trust in Marvel.
WandaVision grew leaps and bounds from that point, bringing in wider elements of the MCU, introducing new characters like Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris), reintroducing some old friends like Darcy (Kat Dennings) and Jimmy Woo (Randall Park), while exploring grief in an It’s A Wonderful Life kind of way. All this, and it gave us one potentially great new villain in Kathryn Hahn’s Agatha Harkness. Although…perhaps she’ll be less of a villain now?
Episode 9 of WandaVision wraps up the first (only?) season, and whereas last week was basically an information dump, this one is all about big emotions and big magical action scenes. Both director Matt Shakman and star Paul Bettany lowered expectations (The word “disappointed” has been thrown around a lot), and perhaps some will be. There is no gigantic, mind-blowing cameo to speak of, that’s true. There is no Internet-breaking reveal. However, it does a good job of tying up this traumatic and weird chapter for Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen), while setting up what we know the rest of Marvel’s Phase 4 is going to be all about.
Picking up right where things left off, it’s a pitched battle of witches all across the town of Westview. Wanda’s novice abilities are made up for by raw power, and she gets the upper hand on Agatha by using things around her as weapons, like a car that she slams into Agatha’s face. But Agatha has the skills to match Wanda’s strength. She reveals that Wanda has an entire chapter written on her in the Darkhold, which is an evil book of magic. Meanwhile, the arrival of the emotionless white version of Vision (Paul Bettany) that we saw last episode arrives and nearly kills Wanda until her Vision arrives to even the scales.
There’s just one problem. Wanda’s version of Vision isn’t a flesh-and-blood creation, but the one rebuild on the outside definitely is. This becomes a recurring problem as Agatha releases the people of Westview from Wanda’s thrall, with the citizens pleading to either be set free or to have their loved ones allowed into the sitcom. Others would rather be dead than trapped in Wanda’s screwed-up version of reality. Anguished at the torture she’s put these people through, Wanda begins to lift the veil so they can escape, only to realize that would mean the end of Vision and her two children, Billy and Tommy. Instead, Wanda gives in and keeps the hex as it is. Some hero!
Meanwhile, another mystery gets wrapped up by shooting down any hope that Evan Peters would be sticking around as Quicksilver. He’s basically keeping Monica captive in his room, using his speed powers to hold her at baby. But in a quiet moment she discovers that he’s not Pietro Maximoff at all, just some slacker dude with a really stupid name. She gets the upperhand on him and jets off, using her cool new powers. Those same abilities come in handy when she shows up just in time to save Billy and Tommy from S.W.O.R.D. Director Hayward (Josh Stamberg) and the military, who have finally breached the hex. He then has his truck slammed into by Darcy in the old ice cream truck from last week. I’m guessing if Hayward were Ultron, as I predicted, he might’ve done something about that.
Speaking of Ultron, what had been a battle of laser beams and molecular warping between Visions has now become a philosophical debate about Greek mythology. Specifically, it’s about Theseus’ ship and whether it can be considered the same if all of the planks were removed and reassembled into something new. This thought perplexes the new Vision, who decides that his imperative to kill Vision doesn’t hold up considering all that has happened. Well, that’s convenient.
The showdown between Wanda and Agatha gets ramped up now that all of the other chess pieces are off the board. Wanda tries her confusing mental tricks, the same ones she used to fuck up the team in Avengers: Age of Ultron, but they backfire when used on Agatha. The evil witch keeps absorbing all of Wanda’s chaos powers, soaring high into the air as the Avenger fires off one magical blast after another. While we think she’s trying to take down Agatha, what Wanda is really doing is setting up runes all across the sky.
What was that Agatha said last week about runes? Oh yeah. Within a certain space only the one who created the runes can use their powers. After all of this time, all along Agatha was just a common supervillain who gives away the tools of her own defeat.
From here, Wanda fully embraces her power as the Scarlet Witch, donning the familiar headdress with a modified costume. Rather than destroying Agatha, she simply rewrites her back into nosy neighbor Agnes, to exist in Westview as a nuisance forever. But before she does it, Agatha has a warning. Wanda doesn’t know anything about her powers, and someday she will need Agatha’s help.
“It’s time. Shall we head home?”
Vision and Wanda return home with Billy and Tommy, the hex unraveling behind them. After putting the boys to bed one last time, Wanda reveals the truth to Vision, that he is borne from a small piece of the Mind Stone that resides within her. That he is made of her sadness, hope, and mostly of love. They share one last kiss before he vanishes, and the rest of Westview returns to its natural state, albeit with a lot of devastation in Wanda’s wake.
The final moments are a bit corny and overwrought, but I doubt it’ll bother anybody. It’s funny that Wanda and Vision were such a poorly-developed couple before this series, and for the entirety of it they’ve spent in a completely fictional existence. But now as WandaVision closes I’m so invested in them that all I wanted was for them to have their “Happily Ever After” moment. I expect some fans will find what they get to be bittersweet at best.
This episode leaned heavily on The Wizard of Oz as a visual and thematic cue. During the fight with Agatha, the evil witch is hit by a car and smashed into the side of a house, leaving only her feet sticking out from underneath. Playing in the Westview movie theater, as always, is Oz the Great and Powerful, which deals with false realities and a power that exists behind the curtain.
So while there may be some disappointment by those who were expecting an earth-shattering conclusion, Marvel has you covered with two credits sequences setting up future stories.
The first involves Monica Rambeau, who after reconnecting with Jimmy and learning that Darcy has fled, is told by an agent that she is wanted in the Westview movie theater. When Monica arrives, the agent reveals herself to be a Skrull, and there representing an old friend of her mother’s, who would very much like to meet her. When Monica asks “Where?”, the agent simply points up to the sky.
Clearly, this is a Nick Fury reference and could indicate Monica will be part of the Secret Invasion series with Samuel L. Jackson and Ben Mendelsohn as Talos. I’m all for this. Sign me up now, please.
The other scene is a little more confusing, but will probably have greater implications. We find Wanda off in a remote cabin, not unlike the one Thanos retired to after Avengers: Endgame. While it looks as if she’s quietly taken herself off the grid, we see that it’s all just a cover. Wanda is actually inside researching the Darkhold, and before the scene ends we hear the cries of Billy and Tommy.
Is Wanda researching a way to bring back her children? Something tells me this is exactly what she will be doing in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. And if Wanda still has the Mind Stone within her, as she said earlier in the episode, she can almost do anything in conjunction with her chaos magic.
Overall, I stand by what I’ve said before, that WandaVision is the most creatively ambitious project Marvel Studios has undertaken. If nothing more, it has set an incredibly high bar for the rest of their Disney+ programming, and if there’s any “disappointment” to be found it’ll be if/when Falcon and the Winter Soldier is just a fun action series with no higher aims. Even if it is, I’ve learned my lesson. Trust in Marvel. They haven’t steered us wrong yet.
After teasing an introduction of the X-Men with an elaborate WandaVision bait-and-switch, could Marvel Studios actually have a movie in the works? Take this with a grain of salt, but The Illuminerdi say Kevin Feige is developing an X-Men franchise reboot titled simply The Mutants.
That’s pretty much all of the information they have, so it could be one of those stories sites come up with just so they can say “we told you so!” when the real story finally breaks. But then again, The Illuminerdi has gotten a few things right recently, so who knows?
Feige hasn’t said much about the X-Men since the characters’ rights were reacquired when Disney acquired Fox. The previous franchise began in 2000 with X-Men and continued through 13 films, concluding with last year’s The New Mutants. Overall, the films made over $6 billion worldwide but suffered creatively and financially in the final stretch. I would say a lot of that could be attributed at the time to uncertainty by the impending Disney deal.
The only Fox X-Men movie we know to be carried over to the MCU is Deadpool 3with star Ryan Reynolds. We still don’t know how Marvel plans to integrate him, though. Will the merc be interacting with the Avengers and other characters we’ve already been introduced to? Or keep his distance while cracking jokes at their expense? What fun is a Deadpool movie if he doesn’t make fun of the universe he’s in?
So what do you think of The Mutants? Personally, I’m skeptical that Marvel would bring in the X-Men and not use that as a title. It would be a ridiculous misuse of arguably the most popular line of characters Marvel has, but we shall see.
The thing about Coming to America is that it just never gets old. Released more than 30 years ago, it remains highly enjoyable, damned funny, and features Eddie Murph and Arsenio Hall at their absolute best. The tragedy is that we didn’t get more of them together, and have had to wait so long to see them reunited in Coming 2 America. While the long-awaited sequel can’t hold a candle to its predecessor, it works really well when leaning hard into nostalgia, not so much when trying anything new.
Let’s be honest, though: If you’re eager to see Coming 2 America then you probably are one of those who hold the original dear to your heart, as I and many others do. And you’re probably just hopeful that it isn’t TERRIBLE, the kind of awful sequel that flushes good childhood memories down the drain. Well, it’s definitely not that. Amazon Prime has an easy-to-watch comedy hit on its hands, even if in a year we might have forgotten about this return trip to Zumunda.
Coming 2 America differs from the first movie in that it takes place almost entirely in the fictional African nation of Zumunda. And yes, there is joke about Wakanda also being a fictional place, in order to stay relevant and such. Murphy returns as Prince Akeem, who is soon to take over as King from his dying father (a returning James Earl Jones). Thirty years ago, Akeem was a pampered prince who bucked tradition, flew to America, and found himself a wife, Lisa (Shari Headley), who remains with him and is mother to his three strong-willed daughters, all Shuri look-alikes. But that’s a problem, because in Zumunda the crown can only be passed to a son. That means Akeem must consider marrying off his eldest daughter Meeka (Kiki Layne) to the idiot son of warring tribal chief General Izzi (Wesley Snipes).
Akeem is still gifted, or some would say afflicted, with his right-hand man, Semmi (Hall), whose incompetence rears its ugly head again. We come to learn that decades ago, Semmi got the prince roped into a drug-induced one-night stand with Mary (Leslie Jones), and fathered her son, Lavelle Junson (Jermaine Fowler), a resourceful kid who might be the perfect heir to the Zumundan throne.
The film dives into flashbacks and twists itself into knots to make sure Akeem doesn’t look like he “sewed his royal oats” while in New York the first time around. These scenes are also distracting because of the shoddy de-aging CGI that makes Murphy and Hall look like extras from a Robert Zemeckis movie.
But no matter when the movie takes place, the best jokes hit when Murphy and Hall are together on screen. Jokes are piled high and come at a mile a minute, much like the first movie did. As usual, Murphy and Hall take on multiple roles and aren’t worried about logic when they do. They return as the rowdy barbershop characters who appear to have not aged a day, and they are considerably less-impressed by Akeem’s royalty now than they were before. Cameos are everywhere, as well, from Gladys Knight to Morgan Freeman to Colin Jost (as a racist hiring manager), and if you were hoping for a little “Sexual Chocolate”, Coming 2 America does not disappoint. Pretty much every character we know and love returns, and all get their moment to shine. None more so than Snipes, who was such a stand-out opposite Murphy in Dolemite is my Name, and steals every scene here as the cocky, warmongering Izzi.
However, when the plot gets going it loses quite a bit of steam. Putting a twist on the fish-out-of-water narrative we’re accustomed to, Akeem finds his long-lost son and returns him to Zumunda to be his heir. That also means forcing the boy to marry the sexy-but-subservient daughter of General Izzi in order to avoid all-out-war. All of this happens while Akeem’s highly-qualified daughter sits on the sidelines, which pisses off Lisa who thought her husband to be more progressive.
The patriarchal aspect of Coming to America may have felt normal in 1988 but in 2021 it gets the shredding it deserves, with Lisa taking Akeem and all of Zumunda down a few pegs with a blistering speech. The film relies heavily on flipping aspects of the first movie on their head, but one area where it doesn’t work is having the street smart Junson family (including Tracy Morgan as Lavelle’s uncle) get the Zumundan royal treatment. It was funny to see spoiled, entitled Akeem get his hands dirty with blue-collar jobs in New York City, but the reverse? There’s simply not as much humor in Lavelle and his family being showered with riches and misunderstanding the honor and tradition of the African nation that affords it to them. While the “royal bathers” bit is still great, there’s little about Lavelle’s storyline that makes us want to follow him and not Akeem. A romantic subplot involving Lavelle and an insightful royal barber has no chemistry at all, and feels like a half-hearted effort to mirror the original’s love story. Coming 2 America would’ve been better if it had left the new son angle behind and simply followed Akeem as he juggled fatherhood with the duties of being king.
The film is directed by Craig Brewer, who brought music and energy to films such as Dolemite is my Name, Hustle & Flow, and Black Snake Moan. This isn’t the most dynamic thing Brewer has done, and he seems to be coasting on autopilot here, letting his cast do most of the heavy lifting. When you’ve got a genius like Murphy who can find the humor in just about anything, that’s a pretty good idea.
Will Coming 2 America have the staying power of the first film? Doubtful, but it’s a genuine treat to see Murphy, Hall, and all of these great actors slip so easily back into their roles. They’re clearly having a blast, but more importantly, they really want to make this movie fun for those who have been waiting such a long time for it. The level of dedication and appreciation for the fans that Murphy brings to Coming 2 America is infectious.
Coming 2 America hits Amazon Prime Video on March 5th.
1 of 7
Eddie Murphy and Jermaine Fowler COMING 2 AMERICA
Photo Courtesy of Amazon Studios
Super-powered mutants, shadowy government organizations. It sounds like a Marvel Comics storyline for the X-Men, doesn’t it? Well, it’s not, but their fans may want to take a look at Enhanced, a new film from stuntman-turned-director James Mark (Shazam, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) that is giving off some serious comic book vibes.
Starring George Tchortov (Molly’s Game), Chris Mark and Adrian Holmes (The Boys), and Alanna Bale (Good Witch), the sci-fi film centers on an elite military group tasked with capturing fugitive mutants. When one evil escapee starts killing other mutants to gain their powers, an unlikely partnership is formed to bring him.
Enhanced will be available on VOD beginning March 26th courtesy of Vertical Entertainment.
George Shepherd is part of an elite private military unit that specializes in capturing mutant fugitives. When David, a super mutant, claims vengeance against the government, he gains power by eliminating his enhanced allies, getting stronger each time he kills others like him. On the cusp of total domination, George must join forces with an unlikely partner to end David’s killing spree.
While vaccines are rolling out, the threat of COVID-19 is still out there and theaters aren’t close to back at full strength. We’ve already seen a number of films pushed towards the back end of 2021 as a result, and now Universal is delaying a few of their most anticipated films, as well. And if you’re worried that means you’ll be waiting a bit longer for F9, well, that’s correct, but on the plus side it’s only by a month.
F9 has been delayed once more, moving from its May 28th date to June 25th. You’ll recall it was originally due to open in April 2019, but that date was set aside in favor of Hobbs & Shaw. Further dates were disrupted by a combination of COVID-19 and to avoid the release of No Time to Die.
So why is F9 only dropping a few weeks? It’s because international markets are a major component for this franchise and they’re closer to opening than domestic theaters. Universal is going to strike while the iron is hot, and with Chinese theatres basically operating at max capacity it makes sense to move quickly.
The June 25th date puts F9 head-to-head against Venom: Let There Be Carnage. It’s the Vin Diesel vs. Tom Hardy matchup we’ve always wanted. Sorta.
Meanwhile, Universal has also delayed Minions: The Rise of Gru an entire year to July 1st 2022. If you’re wondering why one blockbuster franchise moves a month and the other a year, it’s because Minions/Despicable Me is the studio’s most profitable brand by far, with tons of promotional tie-ins that need to be maintained. They want to make sure when that film drops, families have no concerns whatsoever about spending all the coin they have on those little yellow buggers. [Deadline]
Keep An Eye Out is driven purely through dialogue. It couldn’t be more important that the script and the actor’s rose to this challenge. Luckily for writer/director Quentin Dupieux – Poelvoorde, Ludig, and the rest of the cast gave his excellent script justice. There are only a few characters in Keep An Eye Out and the film really focuses on a conversation between the two leads. Their chemistry is fantastic, and it truly looks like they had a joy making the film. The way they bicker with each other is entirely believable and the facial expressions, especially from Poelvoorde, are spot on. Poelvoorde’s Buron joins a long line of ridiculous detectives, one of the most recognizable being another French detective in Clouseau. Poelvoorde does such a great job as Buron that I wouldn’t hesitate to watch another film chronicling his exploits.
Keep An Eye Out is quite absurd, but in a good way. It has the feel of a Saturday Night Live sketch combined with a script playing with language reminiscent of Airplane!. Dupieux is able to take only a couple of settings, a very limited cast, and no shiny bells or whistles – and make a fun and memorable experience. Keep An Eye Out does leave you scratching your head at times, but that fits perfectly with the atmosphere Dupieux creates. Not all of it is supposed to make sense, and that’s okay. Dupieux has many little touches throughout – manipulating flashbacks, adding absurdities to characters to make them stick in your mind. By adding these, Dupieux is able to make a unique and refreshing product. In a world of sequels and remakes, Keep An Eye Out stands out and is absolutely worth a watch (and read).
