Bloodshot is a property that I’m ashamed to say I know nothing about….it seems like it couldn’t be more up my alley, yet I’ve never even heard of it until this Vin Diesel movie came about. Diesel, who’s been trying to get a successful comic book film under his belt for years, and only has a single line of dialogue to show for it (“I Am Groot” anyone?) seemed to have a winner here. Maybe not an MCU caliber winner, more of an Upgrade level, but winning is winning right? The trailer is every bit of sci-fi awesomeness you could hope for. One part Universal Soldier one part X-Men with some Blade thrown in for good measure it really feels like one of those under the radar comic book flicks that really resonates with people…like Dredd for example. Then the rating was released. Now, I’m not usually a fatalist when it comes to hearing something is PG-13, you can do ALOT with that rating and a creative director with most projects. This doesn’t seem like most projects, this seems to crave hyper-violence. Much the way that Deadpool would have been neutered by a PG-13, Bloodshot will most likely suffer from the label.
But hey….at least we have these cool new posters! And I’ve included the trailer below just in case you haven’t seen it yet.
For, like, literally YEARS now there have been rumblings of DC’s other bad boy/girl team hitting the screens small or large. We all know about the Suicide Squad but there’s another step-child in the universe of a more….mystical, inclination. John Constantine, Madame Xanadu, Deadman, Shade, the Changing Man, and Zatanna have been the core members and have shown up here and there in the small screen DC ventures, Constantine with his own show and Zatanna on Smallville (obviously Constantine had his own movie as well). Their venture as a group though, has been wrought with trouble. The deal is still in it’s VERY early stages but it looks like JJ Abrams Bad Robot label is picking up the property to do something with it. There’s a TON of potential in this group, especially in today’s world where we are transcending the “superhero” genre and instead making movies that feature superheros. Bad Robot has proven their ability to work with crazy ideas and has the potential to make something totally new, and totally awesome with this slate.
This may come as a shock to you, but I don’t follow Taylor Swift all that much. Unless she’s playing Dazzler in an X-Men movie I don’t know shit about her. What I do know is that Netflix’s upcoming documentary about Swift, titled Miss Americana, is going to cause a stampede as the Opening Night film here at Sundance. And just a day before it debuts, a new trailer has arrived.
Directed by Lana Wilson (After Tiller) and produced by Oscar winner Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom), the film finds Swift using her celebrity to speak up and champion the causes important to her. This wasn’t always the case, as Swift infamously kept quiet during the 2016 Presidential elections, when her voice could have really tipped the balance one way or another. But with her newfound confidence as a vocal activist, Swift faces the same blacklisting that destroyed the careers of another popular pop-country act, The Dixie Chicks.
Miss Americana hits select theaters and Netflix on January 31st.
The Skywalker Saga may have ended on a sour note, but don’t worry; Lucasfilm has your back. The Clone Wars is coming back for one more season to wrap up loose storylines, bringing with it all of the Ahsoka Tano, Dark Maul, lightsaber action that made it such a beloved animated series.
Get it out of your head that Lucasfilm’s animated shows are just to be ignored. The Clone Wars fills in crucial gaps in the stories of Obi-Wan Kenobi, Anakin Skywalker, and more, overseen in part by Dave Filoni who would go on to spearhead Star Wars Rebels and a little thing called The Mandalorian.
SYNOPSIS: From Dave Filoni, director and executive producer of “The Mandalorian,” the new Clone Wars episodes will continue the storylines introduced in the original series, exploring the events leading up to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.
Created by George Lucas, with Dave Filoni as Executive Producer/Supervising Director, “Star Wars: The Clone Wars” stars Matt Lanter as “Anakin Skywalker,” Ashley Eckstein as “Ahsoka Tano,” Dee Bradley Baker as “Captain Rex” and the clone troopers, James Arnold Taylor as “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” Katee Sackhoff as “Bo-Katan,” and Sam Witwer as “Maul.”
Star Wars: The Clone Wars comes to Disney+ on February 21st.
Some have referred to filmmaker Kitty Green’s The Assistant as the Harvey Weinstein movie, a first shot at dramatizing the fury that sparked the #MeToo movement. But to actually watch the film, a muted drama as much about crappy bosses and shitty workplaces than any specific abuses committed by Weinstein, it’s hard not to be a little bit underwhelmed despite an acknowledgement of this movie’s importance.
Julia Garner, a terrific actress with an impassive face and subtle demeanor, is perfectly cast as Jane, the weary, put-upon assistant to a big shot Hollywood mogul. Taking place over a scant 24 hours, the heaviness that Jane is feeling seems like it has been mounting for years. She’s only been at the company for a couple of months with dreams of someday becoming a producer. Instead, she washes dishes, sends emails, makes copies, and fields angry phone calls from her boss’s wife, who takes all of her marital frustrations out on the poor assistant. She endures patronizing comments from her two male colleagues, who guide her in the best ways to apologize when she makes a mistake, or dares step even a little bit out of line. It’s like a horror movie, one where the slasher is never seen and kills his victims’ souls with ugly emails and threatening phone calls.
Bringing her documentarian experience to a fictionalized take on a timely issue, Green keeps the audience at a distance, at too much of a distance, frankly. While we feel for Julia, who watches with cold, dead eyes as one attractive, vulnerable young woman becomes acquainted with her boss, or gets hired out of nowhere like the pretty-and-unskilled intern (Kristine Froseth) from Boise, Green’s choice to remain so impartial also keeps her from exploring the topic with enough depth. As a slice-of-life drama, The Assistant does show us what it can be like inside the high-stress world of an entry level employee at a major studio, during a time before the Weinstein scandals broke. For Jane, she takes in all she sees, but the conflict is always there. Does she risk losing everything by filing a complaint over what she thinks she knows, or does she keep quiet and become silent party to the abuses? The evidence she has is minimal; most of it just thinks she overhears from others, like jokes about her boss’ casting couch (“I wouldn’t sit there”), or the discovery of the new hire’s earring in a peculiar place.
There are also little contradictions along the way that Green could’ve fleshed out and given the film some personality. In a nightmarish scene, Jane takes her suspicions to HR, with Matthew Macfadyen as the duplicitous rep before her. After lowering Jane’s defenses with easygoing charm and platitudes, he accuses her of being jealous of the pretty new girl who is being lavished with attention she never received . It’s a charge that, on its face, isn’t entirely false. He does this before telling Jane that she’s not her boss’ type, a line meant to comfort but hits like a cold slap of indignity.
All of this is presented in sterile, washed-out fashion that is just interesting enough to hold you for the film’s 80-minute runtime, and you’ll wonder about Jane for some time after thanks to Garner’s haunting performance. But what you’ll also consider is why Green fails to make a stronger statement, or present the film in a way that assures people will see it and then spread the word. It’s valuable to get this inside-the-office view of the torment driven young women must have gone through, but The Assistant had the potential to say more than it does.
Like many other genre fans, I’ve been anticipating Color Out of Space since it was first announced. Added bonus? It’s being directed by none other than Richard Stanley. You may know that name from his early 90’s cult classics Hardware(’90) and Dust Devil(’92) or as the director removed from what was to be his third feature The Island of Dr. Moreau due to “creative disputes”. No matter where you might have first heard of him the horror genre has been awaiting his return for about 20+ years and I’m excited that his first film back is Lovecraftian in nature. As many know, adapting any literature to film is going to be risky. Adapting Lovecraft is even riskier. No matter what you do you’re bound to piss a few people off. The thing about Lovecraft’s work is he never directly describes the horrors from the infinite cosmic spaces, rather he describes the fear they induce and leaves the imagery up to your imagination. That in itself makes any attempt a monumental task.
Stanley paints a surreal, almost hallucinogenic landscape that builds a slow creeping dread. What begins as the portrait of a normal family eventually melts in to a mind bending acid trip. The story begins on a remote farm in the outskirts of Arkham, NE. Here we have the Gardners, a family who have recently moved in to Nathan Gardner’s (Nicolas Cage) deceased father’s homestead to escape the bustling city. As he, his wife Theresa (Joely Richardson) and children Lavinia (Madeleine Arthur), Benny (Brendan Meyer) and Jack (Julian Hilliard) are settling in to their new quiet life a meteor crash lands in their front yard bringing a malevolent force that seeps in to the soil. Slowly infecting everything and everyone it comes in contact with. Gradually time begins to slip as the environment takes on a psychedelic shimmering hue. Animals begin to morph and mutate under the influence of the otherworldly visitor and the family steadily descends in to madness.
For a story as short as this one, it’s rather difficult extrapolate a nearly 2 hour movie but they managed to do a pretty damn good job at it. Nicolas Cage doesn’t quite hit his Mandy level performance in this but he does have his times to shine and his supporting cast does what they need to do to progress the story. The visuals are fantastic and there is just enough body horror to keep a fan like me satisfied. This movie on it’s own was entertaining, as an adaptation it did fairly well to satiate a Lovecraft fan like me. There are small nods to the Lovecraftian world scattered throughout, there are stunning visuals and there is some good old fashioned practical effects. While it won’t please everyone or break records at the box office I think Color Out of Space will please genre fans of literature and film alike.
4 out of 5
Color Out of Space doesn’t hit theaters until January 24th but here’s a trailer to tide you over.
The cast of Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings may have just added one of the most kick-ass ladies around, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon‘s Michelle Yeoh. I emphasize “may have” because the source is The Weekly Planet, and I hope they’re right on this one.
What’s especially interesting about this is that Yeoh already has a role in the MCU. She briefly played Starhawk in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, and might even return for Vol. 3. However, she wouldn’t be playing that character in a Shang-Chi movie, or at least it’s unlikely. Not that I’d be against any plot wild enough to have the cosmic Guardians crossover with the kung fu master.
Yeoh was most recently seen in Last Christmas, and will have a role in James Cameron’s Avatar sequels. She also starred in Crazy Rich Asians and Star Trek Discovery.
If true, Yeoh would be joining a cast led by Simu Liu, Hong Kong superstar Tony Leung, and Awkwafina. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opens February 12th 2021, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton.
Marvel is making a more concerted push into animation with a number of animated shows headed to Hulu. The most promising of these is M.O.D.O.K., which features Patton Oswalt as the hyper-intelligent giant head-with-legs, and now we know who will be joining him in the voice cast.
They really went all-out in putting this cast together. Joining Oswalt are Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Melissa Fumero, VEEP’s Sam Richardson, Bridesmaids’ Wende Mclendon-Covey, Parks & Rec’s Ben Schwartz, and more.
Here’s the series synopsis, followed by a full voice cast and character breakdown:
In “Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K.,” the megalomaniacal supervillain M.O.D.O.K. (Patton Oswalt) has long pursued his dream of one day conquering the world. But after years of setbacks and failures fighting the Earth’s mightiest heroes, M.O.D.O.K. has run his evil organization A.I.M. into the ground. Ousted as A.I.M.’s leader, while also dealing with his crumbling marriage and family life, the Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing is set to confront his greatest challenge yet: a midlife crisis!
Patton Oswalt as M.O.D.O.K. – After being ousted from both his evil organization and his family, super villain M.O.D.O.K. (Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing) must reinvent himself if he ever wants the chance to win back the things in his life that are most important… outside of conquering the world that is. M.O.D.O.K. is about to find out that super heroes are nothing compared to his newest challenge…a midlife crisis.
Aimee Garcia (Lucifer) as Jodie – Jodie, M.O.D.O.K.’s wife and mother to his children, has had a late-in-life awakening — excited to pursue her mommy-blog turned lifestyle-brand empire and discover who she is as an independent woman in her forties. There are just too many things to do in this world and not enough time to waste being held back by negativity. And unfortunately for M.O.D.O.K., the thing weighing her down the most…is him.
Ben Schwartz (Sonic the Hedgehog) as Lou – To be honest, M.O.D.O.K. doesn’t really “get” his twelve-year-old son Lou. Not athletic enough to be a jock. Not smart enough to be a nerd. Lou is… well, Lou — a kid who clearly marches to the beat of his own drum. Lou’s lack of friends, ambition and hygiene is a constant worry for M.O.D.O.K., who often projects his own insecurities onto his overly confident son.
Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) as Melissa – Even with her father’s “features,” seventeen-year-old Melissa has risen the ranks to become the Heathers-like queen bee of her school and a star in the world of teen figure skating. Every popular kid either wants to date her or avoid her terrifying wrath. But for all of her success, Melissa secretly yearns for her father’s approval.
Wendi McLendon-Covey (The Goldbergs) as Monica Rappaccini – Monica is a brilliant mad-scientist at A.I.M. and M.O.D.O.K.’s rival at work. Clearly more competent and qualified than M.O.D.O.K., Monica believes she should be running the organization. After GRUMBL acquires A.I.M., Monica relishes in M.O.D.O.K.’s suffering until the new management begins to infringe on her ungodly experiments. With a common enemy in Austin, M.O.D.O.K. and Monica are finally able to put aside their differences and work together… when they aren’t constantly betraying each other.
Beck Bennet (SNL) as Austin Van Der Sleet – After M.O.D.O.K.’s evil organization A.I.M. is run into the ground, he’s forced to sell it to silicon valley tech-giant GRUMBL. GRUMBL sends slick, twenty-something Austin as a “post-merger-integration-consultant” and M.O.D.O.K.’s new boss. Though M.O.D.O.K. wishes he could just zap Austin to the Negative Zone, M.O.D.O.K. must find new solutions to confront Austin’s corporate jargon-speak and frequent mandatory HR meetings, if he’s ever going to reclaim A.I.M. from Austin’s grip.
Jon Daly (Big Mouth)as Super Adaptoid – A snarky android with ambitions to live, feel and create, but is instead forced to spend his days massaging the hoverchair sores on his creator M.O.D.O.K.’s scalp. Although the Adaptoid dreams of overwriting his programming and turning on M.O.D.O.K., there is also a begrudging friendship between these two.
Sam Richardson (Veep) as Gary – Gary is a henchman or “beekeeper” at A.I.M. who is fiercely loyal to his boss M.O.D.O.K., even if M.O.D.O.K. struggles to remember his name. As M.O.D.O.K. continues to get demoted within his own organization, Gary is there by his side, always offering his help and unshakeable optimism whether M.O.D.O.K. wants it or not.
MODOK debuts on Hulu later this year, with Jordan Blum (Community) as showrunner.
The Argentos are getting back into the giallo game. Dario Argento is a legend of the horror genre, with films like Suspiria, Deep Red, and Inferno to his credit. He hasn’t directed anything since 2012’s bizarre Dracula 3D, but is set to join his daughter Asia Argento for a new Giallo film, titled Black Glasses.
BloodyDisgusting has the news, but doesn’t offer up anything in the way of details. The father/daughter pair is potentially interesting even if their film is likely to only appeal to their hardcore fanbase. At 79-years-old, Dario has been far removed from the movie scene, other than allowing Luca Guadagnino to remake Suspiria back in 2018.
As for Asia, she hasn’t made a movie since 2014 but has definitely been in the headlines. She’s been at the center of the #MeToo movement, but not always as one of the abused. In fact, she recently settled a lawsuit by a male accuser, making her more of a pariah around Hollywood than before. That led to a very public falling out with Rose McGowan that did neither of them any favors.
Black Glasses has been in the works for a few years, so who knows how far along it actually is or if we’ll have a chance to see it. The plan is to shoot later this year, so we should know more soon enough.
Universal has announced that they will bring in Hobbs & Shaw director David Leitch to captain the rebooted ship that is Kung-Fu. On a purely action basis Leitch seems like a no-brainer. With a resume that includes John Wick, Atomic Blonde, and Deadpool 2 in addition to the aforementioned Fast & Furious spin-off Leitch has proven consistency and proficiency in the genre to say the least. As far as I can tell there are really only two issues with this news. Well, one issue and one thing that I’m surprised didn’t happen.
Kung-Fu, while action oriented, was more of a philosophical story. One of the main points was that Kwai would only resort to violence when absolutely necessary. John Wick, he was not. A GOOD reboot of the series HAS to be heavily involved in eastern philosophy. It would be easy to make an action heavy story about a martial artist walking the land. What would be amazing though, is to make that same story and highlight the beauty of the mindset that accompanies those high-flying kicks. Leitch has been able to add subtext to his films, but not to an especially deep level. His ability to do this will be what decides if this is going to be a throw-away rehash or the start of something altogether new.
Leitch is a white dude. Now there’s nothing wrong with that by itself, but when you factor in the diversity movement in full swing AND the story behind the making of the original series makes me think this was a softball swing to get a good Asian director at the help. For those who don’t know the show was the brainchild of Bruce Lee, Lee was ditched as the lead in favor of Keith Carradine because producers didn’t think audiences wanted to see an Asian actor in a leading role. While I think race shouldn’t come into the choice in most cases, in this particular one it seems like a good chance to right a historic wrong.
