Suicide Squad may have been one of the DCEU’s most successful films with $746M, but there’s no denying it’s all kinds of jacked up. Following the success of Deadpool and the failure of Batman v Superman, extensive reshoots and edits were made that radically changed the tone and central storyarc so that we have no idea what it was originally. Well, we’re learning a little bit more of what the plan might have been thanks to director David Ayer, who says Justice League villain Steppenwolf was actually the big bad, and not the comically awful Enchantress.
This is right. Enchantress was under the control of a mother box and Steppenwolfe was prepping an invasion with a boom tube. Had to lose that then the JL story arcs evolved. https://t.co/pSAag9rpZq
Um, do yourself a favor and avoid the comments. You’ll enter an ugly, sorta pathetic #ReleasetheSnyderCut #ReleasetheAyerCut rabbit hole that’s tough to escape from.
So it seems those weird creatures that the were under Enchantress’s command were originally meant to be parademons, which I guess is better than them originally being Minions from Despicable Me. Honestly, I don’t know if this would have materially changed the movie for the better, but it would have tied Suicide Squad and Justice League closer together when both seemed to be headed for an ultimate showdown with Darkseid. Obviously, that changed when Zack Snyder was jettisoned and his two-parter was cut down to a solo.
The future of Suicide Squad is actually pretty bright at the moment. Margot Robbie’s Harley Quinn has been spunoff into the upcoming Birds of Prey film, while Guardians of the Galaxy‘s James Gunn has been hired to spearhead a Suicide Squad sequel.
1. Ralph Breaks the Internet (review)- $55.6M/$84.4M
Disney doesn’t do a lot of animated sequels, but when they do they’re big. Six years after Wreck-It Ralph, Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet earned a high score of $84M over five days, among the top three debuts for Thanksgiving weekend. This was huge because I’m not sure there was an immediate desire for another Ralph movie until we started seeing promos for this one. The Internet conceit was a lot of fun and Disney played up their many brands all the way to the hilt. And of course the Disney princesses scene was a brilliant marketing move because who wouldn’t see that historic moment on the big screen? Worldwide it’s hauled in $125M, and I’m doubtful it’ll approach the $471M of its predecessor, but this is a good number that should keep the Mouse House happy until next month’s Mary Poppins Returns.
2. Creed II (review)- $35.2M/$55.8M Creed II came out the box swinging this Thanksgiving week with $55M over the five days, the biggest ever for a live-action film over this period. The film worked as both a sequel to Ryan Coogler’s Creed from three years ago and a sequel to Rocky IV, becoming the highest-grossing debut of the entire franchise. Despite some criticisms, including my own, that the “return of Drago” premise was kinda cheesy, I think it actually worked in hooking audiences from across the age spectrum.
3. Dr. Seuss’ The Grinch– $30.2M/$180.4M
4. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald– $29.6M/$117.1M
It was a rough second week for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. The Potterverse sequel fell 52% from last week and has earned just $117M over the first 10 days domestically. That’s not great, and a far cry from the first movie which ended its stateside run with $234M. Doubtful this comes anywhere near that. On the plus side, overseas is where it’s making a killing with $322M, for a worldwide total of $439M. That number will keep JK Rowling’s franchise rolling right along, and I continue to think we will see them swap out that box office-killing Johnny Depp. I think his presence has had a detrimental effect that Warner Bros. will seek to correct.
5. Bohemian Rhapsody– $13.8M/$152M
Incredibly, the Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody has earned $472M worldwide, surpassing the $441M by La La Land and $434M by The Greatest Showman. This show isn’t nearly over, and we could be looking at $600M when all is said and done.
6. Instant Family– $12.5M/$35.7M
7. Robin Hood (review)- $9.1M/$14.2M
I don’t know if anybody other than Lionsgate was hoping for a new Robin Hood franchise, but they’re going to be very disappointed. It was a frankly disastrous debut for this updated Robin Hood starring Taron Egerton and Jamie Foxx. A $9.1M domestic debut is about as bad as it gets for a major studio blockbuster opening in 2800 screens. My review and the majority of reviews speak to how awful this film was, but I want to where the demand for it was to begin with? Who said, “Hey, it’s time to update Robin Hood for a new generation? And let’s open it on the most competitive weekend of the year!” Jamie Foxx has never been a box office draw but I think there was some hope for Egerton following the Kingsman films. This all but dashes those hopes against the rocks.
8. Widows– $7.9M/$25.5M
9. Green Book (review)- $5.4M/$7.8M
It was a big leap into the top 10 for Green Book, which added over 1000 screens and earned $5.4M in the second weekend. The crowd-pleasing road trip film stars Viggo Mortensen as a New York City bouncer, and Mahershala Ali as a classically trained pianist, as they drive through 1960s era Deep South. I see it as the clear frontrunner for Best Picture and those high Oscars aspirations should power it along for a few more weeks at least.
10. A Star is Born– $3M/$191M
December has a bunch of big releases dropping all around the same time, and it’s fair to say that Mary Poppins Returns and Aquaman may be the biggest. The original Mary Poppins herself, Julie Andrews, has a role in one of these two movies, but it isn’t the one you might expect her to show up in. Instead, she’ll be hanging out with a certain Justice Leaguer who carries a trident and talks to fish.
EW has confirmed that Andrews has a role in Aquaman, lending her voice to one of the film’s key characters. She’ll be voicing the Karathen, a mythical creature important to Arthur Curry (Jason Momoa) and his attempts to peacefully unite Atlantis and the surface world. Andrews has stayed busy doing voice work on the Despicable Me films as Gru’s mother, and as the Queen in the Shrek franchise. She hasn’t actually appeared in a screen role since 2010’s The Footh Fairy, which very much played off her Mary Poppins past.
Aquaman producer Peter Safran on how Andrews came to join the cast…
“We wanted the Karathen to have the voice of a classic British actress, albeit somewhat digitally altered. And when we found out Julie was interested and available and excited to do it, casting her was a no-brainer. Who knew that Aquaman would have the real Mary Poppins this Christmas?”
If you’re wondering why Andrews isn’t in Mary Poppins Returns, it’s not because she’s angry the sequel is happening. Director Rob Marshall told EW last year that Andrews graciously stepped aside so as not to take away from Emily Blunt’s performance.
So listen out for Andrews when Aquaman opens on December 21st. Or if you’re an Amazon Prime subscriber, you can check it out a week early.
If you’ve never heard of Anna Todd’s After series of young adult novels, I think a fair description would be to say they’re like the teenage equivalent of Fifty Shades. If the idea of that turns your stomach just a little bit, then you also probably won’t want to know the first book in that series has been read over a billion times on Wattpad and has sold millions of print copies. With the Fifty Shades trilogy now wrapped up on the big screen and earned over $1.3B worldwide, it was inevitable that After would soon follow.
The first trailer for After is here, and chances are you know if this is something you’re into. The film stars Josephine Langford, sister of 13 Reasons Why‘s Katherine Langford, and Hero Fiennes Tiffin, nephew of Ralph Fiennes. Interesting duo, to say the least. The story is very much in the Fifty Shades mold, as a loyal, studious young woman enters college and has her world turned upside down by a charismatic bad boy.
Behind the camera is relative newcomer Jenny Gage (All This Panic), working from a script by Two and a Half Men writer Susan McMartin. Also in the cast are Pia Mia, Jennifer Beals, Selma Blair, Peter Gallagher, and Samuel Larsen.
After hits theaters on April 12th 2019.
Here’s the synopsis: Based on Anna Todd’s best-selling novel which became a publishing sensation on social story telling platform Wattpad, AFTER follows Tessa (Langford), a dedicated student, dutiful daughter and loyal girlfriend to her high school sweetheart, as she enters her first semester in college. Armed with grand ambitions for her future, her guarded world opens up when she meets the dark and mysterious Hardin Scott (Tiffin), a magnetic, brooding rebel who makes her question all she thought she knew about herself and what she wants out of life.
*NOTE: This is an edited reprint of my review from the Middleburg Film Festival. Shoplifters is in theaters now.*
After an unusual detour with legal thriller The Third Murder, Japanese auteur Hirokazu Koreeda returns to his domestic drama comfort zone with Shoplifters, winner of this year’s Palme d’Or at Cannes. The acclaimed film touches on a topic that has been a touchstone of most of his finest works, the idea that family is more than blood; it’s about finding people you care about and care about you. For people who live on the margins of Japanese society this is especially true, and while Koreeda tackles the subject with his usual empathy, warmth, and humor, a darker edge emerges that we haven’t seen from the filmmaker in quite some time.
Shoplifters introduces us to Osamu (Koreeda regular Lily Franky), the patriarch of a makeshift family skirting by on the margins of Japanese society. He has taught his son Shota (Jyo Kairito) how to be an expert shoplifter, and the two of them make for a formidable thieving duo. The family isn’t homeless, although they live in a rundown home too small for the number of them crammed inside. They’re also not unemployed, but steal because their meager salaries are insufficient. Osamu’s wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando) works in a clothing factory; the grandma Hatsue (the late Kirin Kiki) receives a monthly pension, and sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka) has found employment in Japan’s sex industry. Their life is messy, exciting, and loving, with each relying on the other for happiness as well as sustenance.
But things get complicated when the big-hearted Osamu encounters Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), a young girl apparently abandoned in the cold of night. Taking her in, Yuri quickly becomes part of the family structure, and while Shota is unusually angry about her at first, they all accept her as one of their own. There’s more to Yuri’s story, though, and it becomes clear that there are people who have hurt her in the past, and are out in search of her.
The conundrum at the heart of Shoplifters is whether Osamu should continue to care for Yuri, keeping her safe in a place full of people who love her, or return her home where she faces possible abuse with her real parents? There are greater considerations than that, as well. Osamu can’t promise Yuri an economically comfortable life by any means, and they are still a family of criminals. Perhaps non-violent criminals, but criminals nonetheless. Is that really the appropriate environment to raise a child in?
There’s always something so comforting about Koreeda’s portrayals of domestic life, where conversations always take place over a plate of noodles or some other delicacy. Scarcely a scene goes by when somebody isn’t cooking, talking about food, or shoving something into their mouth. If there is a cinematic equivalent of comfort food, Koreeda’s movies are it and Shoplifters is one of the best examples. While the film has taken some heat in Japan for glorifying thievery as a lifestyle, Koreeda passes no judgment on his characters. He chooses to merely observe them and invites us to form our own opinions, all the way up until Koreeda pulls the rug out from under everything we thought we knew.
Perhaps no other director around presents such a vivid picture of the human struggle, its joys, pains, and surprises. Shoplifters, while slight in plot and repetitious to Koreeda’s legion of fans, reinforces his special gift for exploring and breaking down unique family structures in a way that is both heartwarming and entertaining.
After taking us through an 8-bit nostalgia trip with Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph, directors Rich Moore and Phil Johnston take their ham-fisted hero into the world wide web! Ralph Breaks the Internet hit theaters this week, and it finds Ralph and his pal Vanellope von Schweetz journeying into the sprawling, dangerous Internet to fix her broken Sugar Rush game.
I had the chance to talk with Moore and Johnston about the anticipated sequel, continuing Ralph’s hero journey, our mutual love of Twisted Metal, the creation of Gal Gadot’s Shank character, and more. You can check out the interview below, and my review of Ralph Breaks the Internethere!
*NOTE: This is an edited reprint of my review from the Middleburg Film Festival. The Favourite is open now in limited release, expanding next month.*
Royal palace intrigue is often bawdy and always scandalous, but in the hands of director Yorgos Lanthimos it reaches new levels of delicious evil. The Favourite is a lot like the director’s bizarre romance, The Lobster, twisted and disturbing in its depiction of people who will do anything for love. In this case, it’s the love of power that’s paramount, and the manner which that love of power corrupts provides a lot of sick enjoyment, but like too many o fLanthimos’ films the high doesn’t last quite long enough.
The Favourite is perhaps the most easily accessible of all of the director’s films so far. Olivia Colman plays the terrifically bawdy and childish Queen Anne, the 18th-century monarch who babbles incoherently in-between treatments for her gaut-ridden legs. She barely runs her kingdom, leaving that in the hands of her best friend and secret lover, Sarah (Rachel Weisz), a bludgeon of insults and aggression but a straight arrow in a place where lies are the surest currency. As the wife of the country’s finest soldier (Mark Gatiss), she uses her closeness to the Queen to push his case for a continued war with France, while the opposition party, led by powdered blowhard Harley (Nicholas Hoult), wants to sue for peace. How goes the action between the sheets, so goes the country.
Into this illicit affair enters Sarah’s cousin, Abigail (Emma Stone), who has fallen far from grace and comes crawling, quite literally, covered in stinking “mud”. Lost to her father in a bet and used as a sexual object ever since, Abigail arrives with the hope of a job, attaining a menial one that Sarah clearly loves lording over her. But of course, we are talking about a game of thrones here, and Abigail has higher aspirations. It isn’t long before she’s weaseling her way into the Queen’s good graces,”accidentally” letting slip that it was she who soothed her ailing legs, or by feigning interest in her 17 pet rabbits. The site of the furry creatures bounding around all over the place is just one of the indelibly wacky images The Favourite will leave. Another, which had the crowd roaring with laughter at our screening, featured a palace ball where Abigail’s potential suitor Masham (the ubiquitous Joe Alwyn) explodes into breakdance in a whacked-out dance line like it was something out of Soul Train, all while a stoney-faced Sarah grooves at his side.
Penned by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, The Favourite relishes in upsetting our expectations of the genre. The first use of the word “cunt” rips through the formal, mannered dialogue like a gunshot, and we love it for its vulgarity. The film is a lot like its subjects in a lot of ways, a snake hiding in plain sight. Beneath the prideful, superior air is a film that doesn’t mind getting in the gutter, and the crazier it gets the better The Favourite is. Lanthimos also seems more interested visually the further off the rails his story veers, with a wide array of fisheye lenses and ratio tweaks adding a surreal quality. We’re gorging on this delicious mischief as much as the Queen enjoys shoveling cakes into her eager piehole, only to vomit it up and keep on eating.
One can’t help but love how feminine this story is, that we are watching three women controlling the reins of power, manipulating the feeble men around them like pieces on a chess board. They are in every way as capable of ruthless aggression, as well as some posturing, as any man. The power struggle between Sarah and Abigail often playing out at a shooting range, where the latter proves she is a very quick study at aiming for and hitting what she wants. Each of the leading ladies is brilliant, shifting with ease from charming and ladylike to murderous rage in the span of a few words.
But this exploration of the connection to women and power has its comic limits, and the film takes a grim tone once each lady becomes the instrument of their own defeat, in a sense. As much of a fun romp as it is up to that point, it’s just as baffling later on that the absurdist aspects are sacrificed at the altar of seriousness. Again, this is a common thread for Lanthimos and its as if he creates a vision so strange, so aslant from reality, that he’s never quite sure how to keep it going. He has even less of an idea how to wrap it up, and The Favourite abruptly pulls the rug out to such a degree that it’s jarring and unsatisfying.
Let me give you a tip, ladies. You don’t want to know what men are thinking. You might exclaim “What is HE thinking!?” all the time, but it’s not something you actually want to find out. It’s a cesspool up in our heads. As Taraji P. Henson finds out in the new red band trailer for What Men Want, a gender-flipped remake of the hit 2000 film that starred Mel Gibson and Helen Hunt.
Henson plays a woman sick of the all-boys’ club at her employer and has an encounter with a psychic that gives her the ability to read the minds of men. What’s interesting is that Henson is pretty wild and vulgar already, but finds that even she can be appalled by what rattles around in men’s brains. So she decides to use this newfound gift to her advantage, which we see in a star-studded poker match (featuring Shaquille O’Neal, Mark Cuban, Tracy Morgan, and others) and in a hookup with Straight Outta Compton‘s Aldis Hodge. That last one definitely does not go as planned.
While this is directed by Hairspray and Rock of Ages‘ Adam Shankman, the film is produced by Will Packer and the team behind Girls Trip.
While we were all deep in our Thanksgiving food comas, Disney was providing one more reason to give thanks. And for some of us, the unwelcome need to stop everything and do some damn work. Serioiusly, Mouse House? Couldn’t wait until Black Friday, huh? No worries. All is forgiven because the teaser for Jon Favreau’s remake of The Lion King is absolutely stunning.
Favreau is employing the same photorealistic motion-capture style that took The Jungle Book to creative and box office heights. The Lion King features an incredible roster of voice stars with Donald Glover as Simba, Beyoncé Knowles as Nala, James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, Billy Eichner as Timon, Seth Rogen as Pumbaa, John Kani as Rafiki, John Oliver as Zazu, Alfre Woodard as Sarabi, plus Eric Andre, Florence Kasumba, and Keegan-Michael Key as the three crazy hyenas. Hans Zimmer is providing the score, but listen out for Tim Rice and Elton John who are back redoing some of their iconic songs from the original.
The 1994 animated film is a stone cold classic, and I think if you asked most people they would say it doesn’t need to be remade. But looking at this teaser, which takes us through those unforgettable opening moments as Rafikia presents a newborn Simba to the world, it’s easy to fall in love with this story all over again. I can’t wait for this, but how do you feel?
With each Toy Story film there are new characters introduced, and it never takes long for them to feel like one of the gang. We’ve already seen Key & Peele’s new duo, Ducky and Bunny, in their own Toy Story 4 teaser, and now Tim Allen has revealed that Keanu Reeves will be playing a new character, as well.
Allen, the longtime voice of Buzz Lightyear, teased Reeves’ character while on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, but doesn’t give any details on who he’s playing except that he has “a bit of an edge.” Maybe it’s a play on John Wick?
“It is so good. These guys are geniuses. It’s so deep and moving and a wonderful plot. I can’t give anything away. It’s about different kinds of toys. They really will surprise you with the toys that they come up with. New guys are in it. Keanu Reeves has got a great part in it.” Toy Story 4 hits theaters on June 21st 2019.
