After wowing us with The Lego Movie, Warner Bros. had an unexpected hit franchise on their hands. They followed it up with The Lego Batman Movie, which also did well, both movies capitalizing on WB’s extensive pop culture footprint. But after two disappointing efforts in Ninjago and The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part, it’s looking as if Lego will be moving on to a new home.
THR reports Universal Pictures is in negotiations to become the new home for future Lego movies. Lego’s deal with WB expired this fall, and it doesn’t seem like it’s going to be renewed. That would presumably put the kibosh on expected sequels for The Lego Movie and Lego Batman, but with Universal there’s the potential for some intriguing projects.
Universal’s two biggest franchises right now are Jurassic World and the Fast & Furious series, so might we get Lego versions of those? The template for Lego Jurassic World is already out there in video game form, but who wouldn’t want to play as a little Lego Dom Toretto? Sounds pretty cool to me. It’s more likely Universal will look to create something new, but there’s no doubt integrating with popular brands is what Lego does best.
Weird wouldn’t be the word I’d use to describe this trailer….really f’in weird would be a more apt description. Remember when Elijah Wood was just like a overgrown cute 6 year old? Hell even his hobbit days fit him well, in the last 10 Wood has fully embraced the creepiness in his normalcy with films like Maniac. Well in Come To Daddy the creepiness is genetic apparently. The story of a boy reconnecting with his father that doesn’t seem to end in a game of catch out front is sure to be quite a bit off center, that being said Wood has shown a surprising knack for success at the horror genre. I wish I could say there was enough in the trailer below to make a call on this one but all we can be sure of is that we will feel dirty when leaving the theater. Check it out and let us know what you think!
If you were one of the few who braved theaters to see Cats rather than The Rise of Skywalker, you were treated to an early dose of Jennifer Hudson before hearing her as the feline Grizabella. An announcement teaser for Respect, the Hudson-led Aretha Franklin biopic, gave us our first look and listen to her as the legendary soul singer.
The teaser doesn’t give away much, but it’s enough to prove something we already knew: Hudson is the rare actress who can do the late Queen of Soul justice. Her rendition of Franklin’s signature hit “Respect” is damn near flawless.
Respect is the first feature film by stage director Liesl Tommy, and centers on Aretha Franklin’s rise to stardom, beginning with her childhood singing in her father’s church. Forest Whitaker, Marlon Wayans, Audra McDonald, Mary J. Blige, Marc Maron, Titus Burgess, Saycon Sengbloh, and Tate Donovan co-star. The film opens October 9th 2020.
Middling reviews may hurt Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in the long run, but it didn’t stop audiences from checking it out as soon as they could. Projections are the final movie in the Skywalker Saga earned $40M on Thursday night. Earlier estimates had it between $44M-$48M. Either way, that’s a good number Disney should be happy with, even though it didn’t come close to threatening Avengers: Endgame‘s $60M record. It also trails The Force Awakens with $57M and 2017’s controversial The Last Jedi at $45M.
Currently, JJ Abrams’ second crack at Star Wars holds a 58% on Rotten Tomatoes, but holds a 76% approval according to exit polling by Comscore/Screen Engine. I think all of that is indicative of a movie that people feel is good, and does the job well enough. If this were almost any other franchise there would be concern of a major dropoff, but this is the final story of the four-decade-long Star Wars saga and everybody is going to want to see it, both die-hard fans and casual moviegoers. The numbers should bear that out over the weekend. If it lands anywhere between $175M-$200M we’ll know it’s on solid ground.
Interestingly, Star Wars continues to be of total disinterest to China. They just don’t give a shit about the Force over there. The Rise of Skywalker opened with just $2.2M (!!!), and could be looking at a sub-$20M weekend total. It’s been diminishing returns for years. The Force Awakens opened with $52M, Rogue One did worse with $31M and that was with Chinese superstar Donnie Yen fronting the marketing campaign. The Last Jedi trailed that with just $28M. Solo? Well, it didn’t even crack $10M.
Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus get snowed under in a big way in the first trailer for Downhill. This is the American remake of the critically-acclaimed Swedish comedy Force Majeur, a Cannes award-winner and Golden Globe nominee in 2014.
Unlike some other foreign films, the relationship story it tells is pretty easy for American audiences to relate with. Ferrell and Louis-Dreyfus are a married couple on a family ski vacation in the Alps. When an avalanche threatens to bury them all, Ferrell looks to save himself while his family is left behind. In the aftermath, both spouses are forced to reevaluate how they truly feel about one another.
Ferrell is perfect at playing the kind of wishy-washy character this story demands. I can’t wait.
The film is written and directed by Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, Oscar winners for writing The Descendants. They co-wrote the script with Succession creator Jesse Armstrong. Also in the cast are Zach Woods, Miranda Otto, Zoe Chao, and Game of Thrones favorite Kristofer Hivju.
Downhill is going to be one of the biggest films at Sundance next month. It’ll then go on to hit theaters on Valentine’s Day.
There’s no wonder director Eliza Hittman is keeping close ties with the Sundance Film Festival. Her first two acclaimed dramas, 2013’s It Felt Like Love and 2017’s Beach Rats, were greeted with open arms, really putting the filmmaker on the map. And now her third film, Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, will soon be seeking a similar reception in the snowy climate of Park City.
As with her previous two features, Hittman is exploring a different facet of human sexuality. The story follows two teenage girls in rural Pennsylvania, as they deal with the fallout of one’s unexpected pregnancy. As they travel across state lines to get the help so desperately needed, the film also looks at the dwindling options for women needing to exercise their reproductive rights.
Hittman has turned to little-known actresses Sidney Flanigan and Talia Ryder to lead the film, joined by Ryan Eggold, Théodore Pellerin, and Sharon Van Etten, Rather than seeking bigger names, Hittman has always looked to create fresh stars, as she did with Beach Rats’ Harris Dickinson, who has gone on to leading roles in Maleficent: Mistress of Evil, The Darkest Minds, and the upcoming Kingsman spinoff, The King’s Man.
Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always will have its world premiere at Sundance next month, then open in theaters on March 13th 2020.
Going into Cats having endured a couple of bizzarro trailers, I thought maybe it would’ve been smart to drop some acid, or at least go in drunk. I did neither. The good news is that after watching this goopy hairball of a film by supposedly-great director Tom Hooper (I’ve yet to see any evidence of this), I feel like somebody sprinkled acid onto my hot dog.
What I won’t do, aside from the mention of a hairball, is drop a bunch of clever feline puns on you. There are undoubtedly a few hundred reviews from critics who think they’ve come up with some seriously funny cat puns. Some of them might be right, most of them are definitely wrong. You don’t need me to try and be funny.
This movie is bad. It’s a true howler, and makes me wonder how in the world Cats was one Broadway’s most successful and long-running shows. Is everybody who watched it high? Coming out of it, I told my friend I still had no idea what the fuck Cats is about. That wasn’t exactly true. The plot of Cats has been known to me for years, but having never seen the stage version, watching it try to play out on screen makes you question everything. In a slight deviation from the familiar “story”, a stray cat named Victoria (newcomer and ballet dancer Francesca Hayward) is literally dumped into the orbit of the Jellicle cats. What’s a Jellicle cat? You got me. The entire plot of the movie consists of this band of misfit felines singing and dancing to explain who they are. They don’t do a very good job of it. Apparently, Victoria has stumbled onto the day of the Jellicle Ball, when Old Deuteronomy (Judi Dench, who enters looking slightly bewildered) will select a deserving member of their order to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and be reborn.
Say what?
Yeah, makes no sense to me, either.
But there’s also an evil dude, a gangster cat named Macavity (an unfortunate Idris Elba), with strange magical powers (???), and a trench coat to hide that he’s super naked underneath it. Like a flasher. He’s the flasher Jellicle? He wants to ascend for some reason, and will make all of his competition literally vanish in order to win. We don’t really know why he wants to go, or why he (and one other cat) have magical powers. We don’t know much of anything, which makes it really annoying that the entire movie is an attempt to explain the unexplainable. I can only gather the stageplay is similarly incomprehensible. Perhaps that’s why people love it?
Other cats put on weird display are the timid illusionist Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson), the formerly glamorous Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson) now seeking redemption, the bubbly Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson, really not in her comfort zone), the flirty Rum Tum Tugger (a randy Jason Derulo), and many more. There are notable, occasionally fun, performances by James Corden, Ian McKellen, and more, with Taylor Swift’s jazzy, sexy Chicago-style rendition of “Macavity: The Mystery Cat” a true standout. Overall, however, there aren’t any songs that are memorable, and that sadly includes Hudson’s centerpiece “Memories”. It’s not really through any fault of hers, though. Mainly it has to do with the poor way in which it was shot, with so many strange close-ups you wonder what Hooper was seeing that you don’t.
Hooper has plenty of experience adapting huge musicals for the big screen, with many celebrating his 2012 version of Les Miserables. I found that film to be les miserable as Hell, but the songs are so great (despite Russell Crowe’s best efforts) that it was easy to overlook Hooper’s deficiencies, all of which are repeated with Cats. When you’re dealing with a film that relies so heavily on precise movements, getting the right angle is paramount. We’re talking multiple dance numbers with dozens of characters littered about every inch of the screen, and yet Hooper dives in for one extreme close-up after another. The editing is so haphazard that we barely get a sense of what is happening. Hayward, a ballerina of some renown, has beautifully graceful movements that largely go to waste because Hooper can’t be bothered to hang on a shot for more than a moment. And when he does, the perspective is often wildly out of sync. The cats shift from human size to normal pet size, their surroundings sometimes accompanying them and sometimes not.
But worst of all are the CGI fur costumes, and VFX that look so cheap it’s distracting. Maybe it was what Hooper and his effects team were going for, I don’t know why it would be the case, but the cast resemble mutant cat/human hybrids that just escaped from the Weapon X lab. The characters all retain the actors’ human faces, which would be fine if they didn’t look like they had been shakily mapped-on using old video game technology. When the cats are still, which is rare, this isn’t a problem. During the bigger numbers with a lot of specific movements you can really see how poor of a job was done. And to make it all somehow worse, all of these cats are so damned horny! You’ll never forget the sight of Dame Judi Dench, bundled up to her neck in white fur, smiling amorously to a decrepit Ian McKellen, her legs and tail waving suggestively in the air. *shudders*
I’ll give Cats this, though; it’s definitely not dull. The cast are fully-committed to their roles, and there’s a campiness that will make this studio-sized spectacle a sing-a-long favorite at midnight screenings. It’s got a real Rocky Horror quality to it, and that extends to the technicolor landscapes, where these cat/human things prance along railways and march through kitchens singing about a whole lot of nothing. But I suspect it’s the unfathomable quality that has drawn people to Cats for so long. In that, at least, I will give Tom Hooper credit. He’s definitely captured that with his film and it may prove to be catnip (Ok, last one) for the musical’s most devoted fans.
For the first time ever, I came away from a Middleburg Film Festival without seeing the latest from my favorite director, Hirokazu Koreeda. The Truth played there a couple of months ago, but I couldn’t fit its one screening into my packed schedule. The wait to see it has been interminable, and there’s still a few months left to go. But at least a new trailer is here to ease the suffering just a little.
Koreeda’s first movie outside of his native Japan, The Truth stars French legend Catherine Deneuve, Juliette Binoche, Ludivine Sagnier, and Ethan Hawke. It centers on the tense relationship between a French actress and her screenwriter daughter, made worse by the publishing of the mother’s memoir.
Families put under unique strain has always been Koreeda’s favored subject. He won the Palme d’Or last year for Shoplifters, and directed other critically-acclaimed dramas After the Storm, Like Father Like Son, Nobody Knows, and Our Little Sister.
SYNOPSIS: Fabienne is a star of French cinema. She reigns amongst men who love and admire her. When she publishes her memoirs, her daughter Lumir returns from New York to Paris with her husband and young child. The reunion between mother and daughter will quickly turn to confrontation: truths will be told, accounts settled, loves and resentments confessed.
If watching grown men shove things up their ass, poop their pants, or blow themselves up is your thing, then today Christmas has come early. Nearly a decade since the last true Jackass movie, Paramount has confirmed Jackass 4 will arrive on March 5th 2021.
That’s right, Johnny Knoxville and the gang are coming back, and Heaven help their body orifices. If you’re curious why anybody would want to see these idiots again, just look at the box offices. 2002’s Jackass cost roughly $5M and made nearly $80M; Jackass Number Two made $84M at twice the budget; and 2010’s Jackass 3D earned an amazing $171M. Since then, the Jackass was used in conjunction with the 2013 hidden-camera comedy Bad Grandpa which made $151M!
The only question is why did Paramount let the franchise stay dormant for so long? The answer may have something to do with the cast getting older, and then there was the untimely death of Jackass member Ryan Dunn. It just seemed like one of those idiotic things that would have a limited shelf life. Some of their antics were incredibly offensive on top of being ridiculously dangerous. Not sure how that stuff will fly with audiences right now.
All I know is that anytime a Jackass movie is on TV it’s got my attention. I hated these guys during their time on MTV but the movies won me over big time. I’ll be there for this new one, too.
A little piece of history was made recently when for the first time ever all major pageant winners were women of color. That’s pretty wild when you consider the first black Miss America contestant wasn’t until 1971 and the first winner in 1983 when Vanessa Williams took the crown. That makes this the perfect time for the trailer for Misbehaviour, which tells the true story of the controversial 1970 Miss World competition.
The 1970 Miss World pageant is remembered nowadays for the on-air protest that totally rattled its host, comic legend Bob Hope. It saw the crowning of the competition’s first black contestant, Grenada’s Jennifer Hosten, played in the film by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Keira Knightley plays feminist activist Sally Alexander, a leader in the newly-formed Women’s Liberation Movement. Hope is played by Greg Kinnear, with roles for Lesley Manville, Jessie Buckley, Keeley Hawes, Rhys Ifans, and Suki Waterhouse. Amazing cast.
Behind the camera is Philippa Lowthorpe, best known for her work on The Crown.
SYNOPSIS: In 1970, the Miss World competition took place in London, hosted by US comedy legend, Bob Hope. At the time, Miss World was the most-watched TV show on the planet with over 100 million viewers. Claiming that beauty competitions demeaned women, the newly formed Women’s Liberation Movement achieved overnight fame by invading the stage and disrupting the live broadcast of the competition. Not only that, when the show resumed, the result caused uproar: the winner was not the Swedish favourite but Miss Grenada, the first black woman to be crowned Miss World. In a matter of hours, a global audience had witnessed the patriarchy driven from the stage and the Western ideal of beauty turned on its head.
Misbehaviour opens next March in the UK, and hopefully a US date will soon follow.
