Paul Schrader made a comeback in a big way with First Reformed a couple of years ago, ending a drought that saw the Taxi Driver writer deliver a lot of crappy movies. Now that he’s got Hollywood’s attention again, Schrader is putting together a hell of a cast for his next movie, The Card Counter, which we already know will star Oscar Isaac.
Joining Isaac in the cast are Tiffany Haddish, Tye Sheridan, and Willem Dafoe. This was confirmed by Schrader himself during an interview with Metrograph about the upcoming Criterion Channel doc about his career…
“But now, in another week, I’m gonna go back to work. I’ve written a new script and I’m making a new film. We’re cast and we’re financed. It’s an original script, very much in the style I like to do. Nice cast. Oscar Isaac is the main guy. Tye Sheridan and Tiffany Haddish. And Willem [Dafoe’s] in it too. I love Tiffany. I’ve never met her, but I was on the phone with her for an hour. She’s a firecracker. It’s like talking to a live-wire connection. She’s very funny and, of course, she makes you funny. When someone’s sharp, that makes you get sharp because you want to keep up. So that’s all good. In my films, I’ll sort of combine two worlds that seem to have nothing to do with each other. In the new one, it’s the world series of poker and Abu Ghraib.”
Damn, sounds like Schrader is a big Tiffany Haddish fan. I can dig that. She’s not the first person I would think of in a Schrader movie, but this could be an interesting match that pays off.
That cast should attract a lot of attention, perhaps even more than First Reformed got. But as for now, Schrader’s film has yet to find a home and the streaming networks like Netflix and Amazon have no interest…
“You know, ‘First Reformed’ was turned down at the script stage and at the finished stage by Amazon and Netflix,” Schrader said. “My new film was turned down by Amazon and Netflix. It’s not a question of, you know, ‘They’ll do anything.’ I’m still outside their system.”
The Card Counter will eventually find a home. It’s just a matter of when, where, and who is willing to make room for one of the great filmmakers to do his thing.
It isn’t too much longer until we will get to see our beloved blue speedster on the big screen in a live-action movie. On February 14, Paramount Pictures plans to release ‘Sonic the Hedgehog‘ in theatres, and we are crossing our fingers that it will be a gleefully fun experience at the movies.
The film was met with immense backlash on social media when its first official teaser trailer was released online back in April of 2019, due to the design used on the titular character. Fans of the series and general audiences complained that the character looked too creepy and bizarre, and not like the Sonic they know and love. Gratefully though, the team went back and redesigned the entire look of Sonic and it looked a whole lot better.
With the release of the movie imminent, we can now enjoy a Super Bowl LIV television commercial promoting the film. In the commercial, we see various different athletes such as Christian McCaffrey, Allyson Felix, and Kyle Busch talking about how fast the hedgehog is. We then see that it was Sonic himself conducting the interviews with all the athletes, and we are then shown footage from the film. If the newest trailers are any indication, it looks like this could actually be a blast of a movie.
‘Sonic the Hedgehog‘ is scheduled to be released theatrically on February 14, 2020.
It’s Walton Goggins vs. Mel Gibson. No wait, it’s Walton Goggins vs. Santa Claus! Either way you want to look at it, the upcoming action-comedy Fatman sounds like a blast.
According to Deadline, Goggins has joined Gibson in Fatman, which centers on “a neglected and precocious 12-year-old who hires an unorthodox hitman to kill Santa Claus after receiving a lump of coal in his stocking. Goggins will star as Skinnyman, the eccentric, sharp-shooting hitman who works at a toy store.” Behind the camera are The Nelms Brothers (Small Town Crime) with Danny McBride, Jody Hill, and David Gordon Green as producers. That may tell you a little something about the style of comedy to expect.
The thought of Gibson, whose history of anti-Semitic statements is well-known, playing a beloved figure like Santa has rubbed some the wrong way. The controversy is either going to help this movie or kill it. No matter what, the addition of Goggins is a strong move that promises a lot of fun. He can currently be seen leading the CBS sitcom, The Unicorn.
Tasya Vos. The name sounds like someone from a Bond movie. That’s not too far off. Vos (Andrea Riseborough) is a corporate mercenary, but not a typical one. Using futuristic tech provided by her employer, a biotech company run by a former assassin-turned-psychoanalyst (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Vos takes possession of a person’s mind and body in order to kill a target. This way Vos and her bosses keep their hands clean, but the psychological impact is what Possessor, a savage sophomore effort from Brandon Cronenberg, is more interested in exploring.
This is the year of Sundance’s 2012 whiz kids suddenly reemerging, and Cronenberg is another. He freaked out the Park City crowd with his debut feature, Antiviral, a grotesque body horror that drew comparisons to the work of his legendary father, David Cronenberg. Possessor, which deals with a parasitic relationship that turns monstrous, is a thing of unrelenting violence. The gore is on another level here, but the twisted psychology at its core makes it all the more disturbing.
It’s unclear how many there were before her, but Vos is top of the class in her chosen profession. We don’t even know she’s there, in the body of a young black woman, as she slits a man’s throat in public then forces the host to commit suicide-by-cop. Vos is the best, but she’s beginning to break down. She needs a break, and attempts an easygoing visit with her estranged husband and son. Vos has spent so much time inhabiting other people she’s forgotten how to be herself. We see her practicing simple greetings and common sayings, replicating human interaction as if she’s an alien from another planet.
Vos can’t get away from domesticity fast enough, and takes on a lucrative new assignment. She’s tasked with occupying the body of Colin (Christopher Abbott), the future son-in-law to a wealthy, powerful tech mogul (Sean Bean). The plan is to have Colin kill enough people in the family so that another can inherit everything, and Vos’s bosses also get a share of the company in stocks.
Voyeurism and privacy play a huge role in Possessor, but Cronenberg could’ve done so much more with it. We see Vos training for her mission by studying Colin, copying his mannerisms, and statements. On the other side, Colin’s job is intruding into the lives of unsuspecting people, watching them through live video feeds so he can transmit the products they use for future marketing purposes. Like an episode of Black Mirror, technology is something to be feared; it breaks down the walls of our security, leaving us helpless victims to those with malicious intent. In an ironic twist, Colin and Vos’s careers mirror one another.
Jumping into Colin’s mind proves to be a destabilizing force, not just for Vos but for her host. Cronenberg depicts the psychotic break, the tug-of-war for control between them in a series of strobing images, one more unnerving than the rest. We’re never quite sure who’s in control at the moment, but the results remain the same, suggesting humanity’s inherently violent nature. Nightmarish violence that isn’t for the weak of stomach. Cronenberg doesn’t shy away from the graphic nature of it; scenes of gaping bullet wounds, throats slit like a knife through warm grease fat, eyes and teeth gouged, spilling pools of blood everywhere. The sounds are even worse. Good luck getting the sound of a body being hacked apart out of your head. Nobody is spared; men, women, children, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing over-the-top about any of it. What’s most chilling is how matter-of-fact it is, seen in unavoidable close-ups. There’s no hiding from what murder looks like, what it does to a human body.
Between the barbarity is where the push/pull between Vos and Colin is brought to life through difficult performances by Riseborough and Abbott. Riseborough’s Vos is the more brittle of the two, as the assassin begins to lose track of herself. Abbott, whose dark eyes always hint at a shadowy presence, shifts from vacant to ferociously unhinged. What’s more, Abbott and Riseborough must also mimic one another’s roles, a tough feat that they pull off successfully, aided by Cronenberg’s frenetic editing and ambient score by Jim Williams.
Cronenberg could’ve taken the concept much further, which can be frustrating, but there’s no denying Possessor is another accomplished work that finds him moving out from his father’s shadow. That’s if it doesn’t take another eight years to see what he does next.
For a few days I considered that Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch might be the secret screening here at Sundance. Sure, the rumors were it would debut at Cannes, but the one thing we absolutely had no idea of was when the movie would be released. Well, now we know, and the movie is arriving this summer.
Fox Searchlight has announced The French Dispatch for release on July 24th. The film will star a bunch of Anderson favorites along with plenty of actors he’s never worked with before, including Benicio Del Toro, Adrien Brody, Tilda Swinton, Lea Seydoux, Frances McDormand, Timothee Chalamet, Lyna Khoudri, Jeffrey Wright, Mathieu Amalric, Stephen Park, Bill Murray, and Owen Wilson.
Anderson collaborated on the script with Schwartzman, Roman Coppola, and Hugo Guinness, for a story described as a “love letter to journalists” following a trio of storylines as part of a “collection of stories from the final issues of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century French city.”
Is something bad just because it’s unoriginal? Usually not when Kevin Hart is involved, his squeaky, jerky, charm has yet to wear off. The true test of that is coming this November 20th when The Man From Toronto is set to premier. Jason Statham will be Hart’s heavy this time, playing the title character, the world’s top assassin, whom Hart’s character is mistaken for at an AirBNB (topical!). The case of mistaken identity leads the two into a team up, and I’m assuming hijinks ensure.
Normally this is where I would say that there’s no way this can be anymore then a forgettable 90 minutes of fun…but dammit I believe in Kevin Hart, and Jason Statham has proven to be a good serious foil. Will this be iconic? No, but come on, you know we’re all going to love it.
The film will be directed by Patrick Hughes (The Expendables 3) from a script by Robbie Fox (Playing for Keeps).
The time to kick the tires and start the fires is drawing near and the media is starting to flow. Top Gun: Maverick doesn’t hit theaters for another 4 months still, but the filmmakers are aware that we are thirsty so they’re starting to offer some sweet, sweet, refreshment, today it takes the form of character posters for the TOPGUN recruits featured in the movie. The one thing that’s popped out to me since the trailer hit and is even more apparent now is just how good the casting of Miles Teller as Goose’s son is. The full crew is comprised of Miles Teller as Lt. Bradley ‘Rooster’ Bradshaw, Glen Powell as ‘Hangman’, Monica Barbaro as ‘Phoenix’, Lewis Pullman as ‘Bob’, Jay Ellis as ‘Payback’, and Danny Ramirez as ‘Fanboy’. I mean, it’s no Hollywood, Viper, Iceman, and Slider but I guess those names are pretty cool, I’m itching to find out the story behind “Bob”. Here’s the synopsis then we’ll drop the images.
After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. When he finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission the likes of which no living pilot has ever seen, Maverick encounters Lt. Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller), call sign: “Rooster,” the son of Maverick’s late friend and Radar Intercept Officer Lt. Nick Bradshaw, aka “Goose”.
Facing an uncertain future and confronting the ghosts of his past, Maverick is drawn into a confrontation with his own deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who will be chosen to fly it.
This coming Valentine’s Day, there are a few options of movies to see with your significant other (or just yourself). There are some horror movies being released during that time, but you may not want to see those with your date. Instead, your safer bet would be Stella Meghie’s latest feature film, The Photograph, a romantic drama.
The second trailer, which is now officially available to watch online, is a short one, but promises a ton of emotional moments and a story that could tug at the heartstrings. The chemistry on display from lead actors Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield looks exceptional and you can feel a connection between their two characters the second they are on screen. It truly seems like a perfect date night movie, and you won’t have to wait that much longer to see it.
The Photograph is scheduled to be released theatrically on February 14, 2020.
It seems like it is one of the hottest trends in Hollywood right now – adapting iconic television programs into feature films. Throughout the years, we have had adaptations such as Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, and The Addams Family, all doing fairly successfully.
This is exactly what Blumhouse is doing this year with their upcoming horror feature Fantasy Island, releasing this Valentine’s Day. However, the creative team behind the project is changing things up a little bit. The original television series of the same name was well known as a drama series and was beloved by audiences all around the world, and ran for a remarkably successful seven seasons.
What Blumhouse is doing with the film adaptation however, is making it a fully fledged horror film, and it looks like it could turn out to be a fun time at the movies. The final trailer, which has just been released online, doesn’t show a lot of clips that we haven’t already seen from the original trailer, but that is also a good thing. Showing less is better, that way the audience doesn’t go into the theatre knowing every scene.
Jeff Wadlow is helming the project, and you can take that however you want it. He previously directed another feature for Blumhouse back in 2018, the critically hated ‘Truth or Dare‘, so it will be interesting to see how this project gets received.
Fantasy Island is scheduled to be released theatrically on February 14, 2020.
Seth Rogen has really found his niche adapting offbeat comics, finding success with Preacher and The Boys, while adding others like the upcoming Fear Agent series alongside The Batman writer Mattson Tomlin. Now THR reports Rogen and Tomlin will reunite for another, Memetic, based on the BOOM! Studios horror graphic novel.
Created by James Tynion IV and published in 2015, Memetic centers on an Internet meme that goes viral, only to cause those exposed to it to go violently insane. One colorblind man proves to be immune, and attempts to avoid the chaos while trying to find his missing boyfriend.
Rogen is on board to produce the film, which will be written by Tomlin.
SYNOPSIS: Meme is an idea that starts with an individual, and then spreads to multiple persons and potentially entire societies. Richard Dawkins suggests a meme’s success comes from its effectiveness to the host. But history shows that destructive memes can spread just as rapidly through society. MEMETIC shows the progression of a weaponized meme that leads to the utter annihilation of the human race within 72 hours. The root of this apocalypse is a single image on the internet, a “meme” in the popular sense. A meme that changes everything.
