Marvel continues to gather up its X-Men! The latest news from THR is that Asa Germann, known for his roles in The Boys, Gen V, and Scream 7, is in talks to play Warren Worthington III aka Angel in the MCU reboot.
Germann had actually tried out for the role of Cyclops, but that ultimately went to Kit Connor. Marvel’s Kevin Feige was so impressed he offered German a different original member of the X-Men team.
Angel is one of the original five X-Men recruited by Charles Xavier, who will be played by Christopher Abboot. He is a wealthy playboy gifted with powerful feathered wings and the ability to fly. That said, the most popular version of the character is Archangel, a blue-skinned, metallic angel of death after being transformed by the villain, Apocalypse.
Also in the cast are Sadie Sink as Jean Grey, Samara Weaving as Emma Frost, Inde Navarrette as Rogue, Maya Boyd as Storm, and Adam Driver as Mister Sinister.
Jake Schreier directs X-Men for release on May 5th 2028.
Guy Moshe is a director that has a lot of potential. He showed it with his visually stunning brawler, Bunraku, which looked like a comic book and Japanese stageplay come to life. That film was derailed by a shocking lack of momentum when the action cooled off, and it’s a problem that has followed Moshe to his latest, The Fix, a military thriller led by Zachary Levi and Liam Neeson. The bones of a great movie are in here, but it’s one that would need to be about an hour shorter, leaning more into the explosive conflicts and heist aspects than questions of morality and half-hearted plot twists.
Levi plays Tucker, a special forces operative in Afghanistan, with Neeson as his supervisor, Larry. When a mission in Kabul to extract a CIA asset goes south, both Tucker and Larry are left disillusioned. Larry, who was already suffering from debilitating migraines, is found to have an advanced form of dementia. Years later, when Tucker goes to visit his old boss, Larry is lucid enough to remember $25M in cash that he left stashed away in Hotel Tehran (the film’s original title, btw), and is presumably still there. Tucker, still angry over what happened and separated from his family, rounds up the old crew to retrieve that money from what is essentially a heavily-armed fortress.
The opening action sequence shows Moshe’s knack for crafting compelling warfare. The chaos is a bit dizzying, but controlled enough that you can always keep track of Tucker and his squad. That’s not the issue. The screeplay co-written by Moshe is an overcomplicated mess that could have been broken down into several different movies. A former CIA asset knows the money’s location, but she will only hand it over when Tucker rescues her daughter, an anti-regime activist, who is being held captive. To help build his cover story, Tucker enlists Zara (Elnaaz Norouzi), a flirty Iranian-American young woman, to portray his wife. Predictably, things get hot and steamy between the two while in close quarters, which only snowballs into a rash of other poor decisioins that keep Zara in harm’s way longer than necessary.
There are other curveballs that Moshe throws at the wall, from betrayals to double agents to the unveiling of a larger conspiracy, none of them packing much of a punch. They exist merely to break you from the tedious conversations and thin ruminations on the cost of war, and the price paid when governments break their promises. Clocking in at over 2 1/2 hours, The Fix would’ve been better served as a 95-minute snatch ‘n grab movie, but Moshe, who served in the Israeli military himself, clearly has a lot he wants to get off of his chest. Normally, I’m all for a filmmaker who isn’t afraid to say what’s on their mind, but not at the expense of telling a better story.
Focus Features really screwed the pooch with the marketing of The Uprising, Paul Greengrass’ historical drama charting the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Perhaps fearing that the film had zero buzz, they erroneously tried marketing it as a Robin Hood origin story. This also fell flat, as audiences clearly don’t give a shit about the outlaw or his Merry Men, as evidenced by The Death of Robin Hood just weeks ago. To be fair, some stories of this rebellion are linked to the mythology of the character, even if he predates it by years, but that’s not the movie Greengrass is offering, anyway. And even if it was, it’s doubtful anyone could sit through this bland, tired slog that is about as exciting as reading the Wikipedia entry.
Andrew Garfield leads the cast as Ploughman, a hard-working everyman mourning the loss of his family to the plague. This corner of England is pretty atrocious; with King Richard II (Woody Norman), a child sitting upon the throne, being guided by his advisors to tax the Hell out of the struggling people even though they already have nothing. This, naturally, pisses them off. None more so than Ploughman, who, after being asked to prove he paid the Death Tax for his family, attacks the tax collector and starts a violent revolt.
The problem with Ploughman is that he’s a construct built to be part of the story, but not the leader of it. The actual leader of the Peasants’ Revolt was Wat Tyler, played by Cosmo Jarvis, joined by the fiery priest John Ball, played by Jamie Bell. Ploughman sort of becomes a passenger in this story, along for the ride but not really driving it forward. It doesn’t help that Garfield, a terrific actor by any definition, doesn’t have the rugged features that Bell, Jarvis, and even Thomasin McKenzie as the fictional tomboy warrior Alyce convincingly bring.
Greengrass can still deliver a formidable action sequence. The Uprising boasts a couple of them; muddy, murky, bloody battles that rival Braveheart in style and scope. They bookend a flabby middle portion that’s tough to endure, with endless prattle by the corrupt royal council or the peasants themselves, who waffle between wanting to love the King and wanting to destroy everything. It’s a missed opportunity that Greengrass’ script doesn’t draw the obvious connections to today, with an increasingly malevolent, wealthy ruling class stepping on the necks of a frustrated populace. The parallels write themselves.
And as for that Robin Hood stuff, The Uprising doesn’t mention the folk hero at all, but it does nod to the character in a bizarre, torturous epilogue full of arrows, masks, and not-so-merry men. The sequence feels wildly out of place, and the film would’ve been better off not including it at all. Either way, The Uprising misses the target, a rare total misfire for Greengrass.
A spotlight year for Margaret Qualley continues with Love of Your Life, a sweeping romance from Oscar nominated DP Rachel Morrison in her sophomore effort behind the camera. The film marks Qualley’s third in 2026 following How to Make a Killing and Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars.
Love of Your Life is Morrison’s first film since the acclaimed boxing drama, The Fire Inside. She directs from a script by Julia Cox. Joining Qualley in the cast are Lanterns star Aaron Pierre, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Gabriel Basso, Catherine Keener, Tamara Lawrance, and Corey Johnson.
SYNOPSIS: Directed by Rachel Morrison (The Fire Inside), LOVE OF YOUR LIFE follows Maya (Margaret Qualley), whose chance encounter with Charlie (Gabriel Basso) sets in motion a sweeping romance and a future beyond anything she had imagined. When that future is suddenly upended, Maya is sent hurtling toward an unexpected new life—one that will force her to reckon with who she is, what she wants, and how to love again.
Amazon MGM will release Love of Your Life in select theaters on October 7th before moving to Prime VideoMarga on October 14th.
Accomplishments on the battlefield and on the football field have long fascinated Peter Berg, as seen in his films Friday Night Lights and Lone Survivor. Now he brings these two themes together with The Mosquito Bowl, a WWII drama based on an incredible true story.
Directed by Berg, who co-wrote it with Mark L. Smith, The Mosquito Bowl centers on four promising football stars who set aside their careers to join the Marines following the Pearl Harbor attack. In 1944, they took part in the Mosquito Bowl, a game between two Marine regiments mainly comprised of soldiers who had been college football standouts.
The film stars Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis, along with Stacy Clausen, Brent Comer, Dominic Bogart, and Pat McAfee.
Berg reunites with author Buzz Bissinger, who also wrote the original Friday Night Lights book that he adapted into his beloved 2004 football drama, which also became a long-running TV series.
SYNOPSIS: Following the attack on Pearl Harbor, four of America’s top College Football stars set their fame aside to enlist in the Marines. As they prepare for the brutal invasion of Okinawa, they’ll play in a legendary game featuring some of the greatest players in history – a game that, for many, will be the last they ever play.
The Mosquito Bowl opens in select theaters on October 30th, before moving to Netflix on November 25th.
So, how is a movie from the director of Signs and the author of The Notebook supposed to work, anyway? The unusual pairing of director M. Night Shyamalan and writer Nicholas Sparks promises to be a huge hook for Remain, a supernatural romance thriller from the duo that stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Phoebe Dynevor.
You can see Shyamalan and Sparks’ opposing styles at work in the new teaser released by Warner Bros. The first part charts the unexpected romance between Gyllenhaal’s reclusive architect, Tate, and Dynevor’s mysterious neighbor, Wren. The relationship is almost too perfect, so when Wren suddenly asks “Why can’t we be together, Tate?” and vanishes into thin air, it’s to nobody’s surprise that weird stuff starts happening.
Shyamalan and Sparks conceived the story together, then adapted different versions of it. The film was written by Shaymalan, while Sparks authored the bestselling book released last year.
Also in the cast are Ashley Walters, Julie Hagerty, and Jay O. Sanders
Remain opens in theaters on February 5th 2027, just in time for Valentine’s Day.
If you had told me that Runner was just an extended “Very Special Episode” of Reacher, I might’ve believed you. Certainly, having star Alan Ritchson play a similar style of rugged, close-mouthed do-gooder will be what attracts a lot of his fans to the film, a throwback buddy action film that his co-star, Owen Wilson, is quite familiar with. But don’t let the oddball pairing fool you; this is a movie that only dabbles in comedy. Sure, it’s funny, but also is pretty violent and leans into its characters’ redemptive arcs more so than laughs.
Runner is the most unusual release by values-based Angel Studios, known for faith-based that attract a very specific audience. This is its most mainstream project ever, one with a chance to reach audiences all across the spectrum. Ritchson plays Hank, a former Navy SEAL and recovering alcoholic in Australia, who works as a private courier. Hank is a big, tough guy, quiet, and nursing a lot of regret for past sins. When we meet him, he’s furiously trying to learn French and embracing Francophile culture, until he gets job from his handler, Iggy, to pick up a rare bird owned by a squabbling couple. After that turns into a disaster, Hank is then tasked with picking up a medical item for delivery. What Hank finds is that it’s a liver going to a terminally ill little girl with an extremely rare blood type, and that he must also escort Ben Bishop (Wilson), who is the actual courier.
Of course, this rare organ is extremely valuable, and so Hank and Ben (and the bird) find themselves under attack by a crazed lunatic, Damian Zaldivar, played with maximum psychosis by Rodrigo Santoro. Hank and Ben are oil and water. Ben’s mouth runs a mile a minute, and he’s constantly pepperig Hank with questions to get the big man to speak. But they have to figure out how to work together if they’re going to survive the constant shootouts with Damian’s goons, and get to the hospital while the organ is still viable. There’s also the constant threat that the recipient will die before they arrive, whether the organ is good or not. The film constantly takes us to the hospital and the girl’s anxious mother (played by Leila George) who is dealing with some shady stuff there, too.
If you’re like me, your mileage with Wilson may vary. He can be exhausting in the loads of buddy comedies he starred in previously, but in Runner he’s taken it down a notch. There’s a funny scene when Ben promises to dial his gregarious personality down a notch, but only if Hank dials his up a notch so they meet in the middle. That’s pretty much the balance between Wilson and Ritchson, too, one carrying the action and the other most of the humor. Even so, this isn’t a movie that’s meant to be a laugh riot. The tone stays pretty serious, with moments of silliness (the bird is fond of playing peek-a-boo) added to lighten the mood when needed.
Director Scott Waugh, known for Need for Speed and Expend4bles, keeps the pace moving briskly throughout the 95-minute runtime. The screenplay for Runner was on the Black List, noted at the time for being one of the best unproduced scripts around. There isn’t much here that breaks the genre mold, but it does go a long way painting all of its characters as more than they appear. There’s tragedy in Hank’s past that informs his need to do what’s right. At the same time, Damian isn’t a villain who is doing what he does for the typical reason. There are very personal stakes for everyone involved.
This being an Angel Studios release, it’s clear that some of the violence and language was toned down to maintain a PG-13 rating. I complained recently about a similar approach taken with Adam Wingard’s Onslaught, which presents itself as an uber-violent grindhouse flick but is pretty tame. The difference is that Runner, which has a pretty high body count, was always meant to be an entertaining crowd pleaser with a moral message. Ritchson has starred in so many streaming actioners lately, films that would’ve been in theaters years ago, that I have to advocate for seeing Runner in theaters where his every punch booms, his kicks thunder, and Wilson’s wisecracks leave you with something to smile about.
Casey Affleck returns to directing for the first time since 2019 with the Venice-bound Company, a Gothic mystery competing for the prestigious Golden Lion award. The film stars Nick Nolte, Ben Mendelsohn, Adelaide Clemens, Scoot McNairy, Emily Alyn Lind, Caylee Cowan, and Casey’s son, Atticus, in his acting debut.
Affleck reunites with co-writer Robert Hansen, author of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. Described as “a meditation on grief, vengeance, forgiveness, and the quiet acts of compassion that can heal even the deepest wounds,” the film is essentially an anthology telling three stories all wrapped into one.
SYNOPSIS: “On a winter night in 1975, a mysterious woman named Evelyn arrives uninvited at a holiday gathering and tells the story of Tom, an aging hermit who rescues a stranded actress during a Colorado blizzard in 1953. To pass the night, the actress recounts an older tale of a farming couple who take in a troubled young drifter as a series of grisly murders spreads fear across the frontier.”
Company doesn’t yet have U.S. distribution, but that could change following its Venice premiere. Check out some first-look photos and a teaser clip below!
Recently announced to have its world premiere at New York Film Festival, Luca Guadagnino’s controversial OpenAI/Sam Altman film Artificial has dropped its first trailer. The news arrives following NEON’s acquisition over the summer, after Amazon MGM dropped out as distributor so as not to piss off Jeff Bezos’ tech bro buddies.
Andrew Garfield stars as OpenAI founder Sam Altman, alongside Anora co-star Yura Borisov as co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Artificial will center on Altman’s firing by Sutskever and the OpenAI board due to a lack of confidence, only for him to be reinstated days later.
Also in the cast are Mark Rylance, Monica Barbaro, Ike Barinholtz, Jason Schartzman, Zosia Mamet, Cooper Hoffman, and Chris O’Dowd. Guadagnino directs from a script by Simon Rich that is said to be unflinching in its look inside tech bro culture.
“The stakes couldn’t be higher in Luca Guadagnino’s thrilling, funny, and very human ‘Artificial,’ a drama of immense moral urgency that propels the viewer through the two decades of machine learning research and technocratic recklessness that have brought us to our current AI crisis point. In 2003, Soviet-born computer scientist Ilya Sutskever (Yura Borisov) began studying artificial neural networks under University of Toronto professor Geoffrey ‘Godfather of AI’ Hinton (Mark Rylance). A decade later, while employed by Google, Sutskever fatefully crosses paths with a young entrepreneur named Sam Altman (Andrew Garfield), the eventual co-founder and CEO of OpenAI.”
Artificial is poised to be one of NEON’s big films this awards season. It will get a limited theatrical run on Christmas Day, before opening wide in January 2027.
Zelda fans are legion, and Nintendo knows it. When the announcement was made for a special Zelda edition Nintendo Direct this morning, those fans hoped they were going to get a serious update on the upcoming live-action movie from Wes Ball. Well, we did get a little something, but probably not all that they were hoping for.
Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was on hand to reveal the film’s title…The Legend of Zelda! Oooh, shocker!! Stunner!! I mean, what else were they going to call it? Thankfully, no subtitle or anything like that. Just straight meat and potatoes.
We did get a pretty basic logo for the film as well, along with confirmation of the April 30th 2027 release date. It’s bounced around the schedule a few times, first on March 26th 2027, then May 7th.
Benjamin Evan Ainsworth is set to star as Link, and since he’s the only one cast in the role I guess we won’t be getting any Ocarina of Time-esque growth spurts. Bo Bragason co-stars as Princess Zelda, joined by Uli Latukefu as Ganondorf, Dichen Lachman as Impa, and Yvonne Strahovski in an unknown role. The late Sam Neill also has a posthumous role as the King of Hyrule, giving us one more time to see the Jurassic Park legend in action.
So yeah, pretty anticlimactic if you were waiting on The Legend of Zelda movie news. But if you love the franchise, the Direct is definitely worth a watch because there’s some cool stuff in there to celebrate its 40th anniversary. You can watch it below.
