Between Deadpool and Logan we’ve seen comic book movies take a hard turn towards the R-rated, and audiences seem to love it. Anything that provides a different take than what we get from Marvel Studios and DC Films, which tend to gear their movies towards the broadest possible audience. And now there’s another uber-violent and uber-vulgar adaptation to get excited over, Accident Man, and I’m surprised this is one I hadn’t heard of before today.
Based on the 1991 U.K. comic Toxin, the film has a pretty sweet cast led by Scott Adkins (Doctor Strange, American Assassin), Michael Jai White (Spawn), Ray Park (X-Men), Ashley Greene (Twilight), Ray Stevenson (Punisher War Zone, Thor), and David Paymer (Drag Me to Hell). Damn. Adkins plays Mike Fallon, a high-class hitman who specializes in making his murders look like accidents. He lives the high life with a “devil may care” attitude, but all of that changes when his peaceful ex-girlfriend is murdered, and Mike goes on a rampage to find her killer.
Accident Man is directed by Jesse Johnson and hits home release on February 6th 2018.
Chris Morris’ directorial debut Four Lions won a ton of awards when it was released in 2010, and basically launched the career of Riz Ahmed, who you may have heard of. Morris’ stinging jihad satire flashed a ton of potential, but the writer/director basically vanished. While Morris did a little bit of TV, it’s only now that we’re hearing about a big screen followup, and it appears Anna Kendrick is a part of it.
Morris has apparently wrapped on a top secret comedy project that features Kendrick, Orange is the New Black‘s Danielle Brooks, Kayvan Novak, James Adomian,Denis O’Hare, Pej Vahdat, Marchant Davis and Mousa Kraish. We don’t have any plot details for the untitled film but just knowing that Morris is back in the game is worth getting excited about.
Less exciting is this set photo which shows Kendrick goofing around in military garb. I really need her to be in a good movie again, and something that doesn’t involve a capella. [via Deadline]
Reunited and it feels so good? The Theory of Everything earned Eddie Redmayne his first Oscar for Best Actor, and it was definitely deserved, while his co-star Felicity Jones was honored with a Best Supporting Actress nomination. They make for a great team, and so it’s no surprise they’re considering a reunion…in a hot air balloon.
Deadline reports Redmayne and Jones are eying roles in Amazon Studios’ The Aeronauts, an action adventure film based on the true story of 19th-century balloonists James Glaisher and Amelia Wren. Glaisher was a meteorologist and scientist with Wren as the balloon pilot, and in 1862 they broke the world record for altitude in an attempt to unlock the secrets of the Heavens.
The script was written by the red-hot Jack Thorne (Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Star Wars: Episode 9) with Tom Harper (Peaky Blinders) directing.
The 23rd annual Critics’ Choice Awards ceremony will air live from the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica on January 11 and excitement is building in Hollywood. It has moved back to its usual January slot and will take place four days before the Golden Globes, ushering in a busy awards season. All eyes will be on the show to see who prevails in prestigious categories like Best Actress, Best Actor, Best Director and Best Picture. They are not exactly a predictor for the Oscars, but the awards provide an insight into which stars and films are gaining momentum at a crucial period in the calendar.
The awards are run by the Broadcast Film Critics Association – which includes 300 members, spread across TV, radio, print and online, that review films – and the Broadcast Television Journalists Association, its counterpart for the television industry. The awards will be aired on The CW and BFCA president Joey Berlin said: “BFCA and BTJA are thrilled to be back on The CW, where many of our finest CCA shows were nurtured. The CW is home to some of the best shows anywhere on broadcast television, and we’re looking forward to being back in their company for years to come. The Critics’ Choice Awards show has grown to be one of the most important and star-studded in Hollywood — and perhaps the most fun. We can’t wait to gather the brightest lights in film and television together again for what is sure to be a spectacular event on January 11.”
Gaye Hirsch, The CW’s head of development, added: “As award season kicks into high gear, we’re thrilled we can bring viewers an exciting night filled with the biggest and brightest stars in Hollywood.” Sportsbooks will offer odds on the various categories in the build-up to the event, and several categories will be hotly contested.
The 22nd Critics’ Choice Awards proved to be a great night for La La Land, which was named Best Picture, while director Damien Chazelle took the Best Director award. That led to a surge of support for the musical heading into the Academy Awards and Chazelle and co looked to have scooped the main prize when presented Faye Dunaway read out its name. But it was revealed to be a mix up on behalf of accountancy firm PwC, which handled logistics at The Oscars, and La La Land’s team had to leave the stage to be replaced by the Moonlight gang.
The Critics’ Choice Awards did not therefore foreshadow The Oscars in the Best Picture stakes, but Chazelle did go on to win Best Director at the Academy Awards. Casey Affleck also won Best Actor in both, but Natalie Portman won Best Actress for her portrayal of Jackie Kennedy, only to lose out to La La Land’s Emma Stone at The Oscars. Winning a Critics’ Choice Award is a tremendous achievement in its own right and it often predicts who will emerge victorious at The Oscars, but not always, so nobody can afford to get too carried away by the results.
This year the likes of Dunkirk, The Post and The Shape of Water are expected to fight it out for Best Picture, while Christopher Nolan is thought to be leading the race for Best Director. There have been several eye-catching performances from leading ladies, but Frances McDormand is generating a lot of buzz for her starring role in Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, while Gary Oldman is heavily tipped to sweep up at awards season for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in Darkest Hour.
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. The long-awaited sequel stars Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Karen Gillan, and Jack Black.
SYNOPSIS: In the brand new adventure Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, the tables are turned as four teenagers in detention are sucked into the world of Jumanji.
When they discover an old video game console with a game they’ve never heard of, they are immediately thrust into the game’s jungle setting, into the bodies of their avatars, played by Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, Kevin Hart, and Karen Gillan. What they discover is that you don’t just play Jumanji-Jumanji plays you. They’ll have to go on the most dangerous adventure of their lives, or they’ll be stuck in the game forever…
The screening takes place on Monday, December 18th at 7:00pm at Regal Majestic in Silver Spring. If you’d like to attend, simply complete the required steps in the Rafflecopter contest form below. Winners will be selected on Sunday, December 3rd and notified by email. Good luck!
Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle opens December 20th.
Rotten Tomatoes takes a lot of heat for having too much influence, and maybe that’s true. But it’s also kinda cool to have so many well-regarded critics all putting their two cents in on a movie. And that makes it very tough to have a uniform opinion on anything. Damn near impossible is for anything to achieve a 100% Fresh rating, especially a movie in wide to semi-wide release that may have dozens, if not hundreds, of reviews. And that’s what makes the achievement by Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird so extraordinary.
Lady Bird has achieved a 100% rating with 164 reviews. That’s crazy. The previous record holder was Toy Story 2 which has 100% and 163 reviews.
So obviously Lady Bird > Toy Story 2, right?
So obviously Lady Bird > EVERYTHING!!!!
Nah, obviously it doesn’t work like that, but this is one Hell of a feather in Gerwig’s cap, especially for her directorial debut. Talk about setting the bar for yourself super high.
Record broken! With 164 Fresh reviews and 0 Rotten, #LadyBird now tops the list of 100% movies with the most amount of reviews at 164. Congrats to Greta Gerwig and @A24
The last time Rooney Mara teamed with director Garth Davis was for Lion, and she was mostly overlooked by stars Dev Patel and Nicole Kidman. Nothing wrong with that, they were both fantastic and so was she, there just wasn’t enough praise to go around during the awards season. Well, Davis has made it up to her in a big way, by casting her as the title role in Mary Magdalene, and now we have our first look at her as Christ’s most faithful follower.
Also starring Chiwetel Ejiofor as Peter and Tahar Rahim as Judas, the biblical drama follows Mary as she leaves behind humble beginnings to join Christ’s flock. Here’s the synopsis:
Set in the Holy Land in the first century C.E., a young woman leaves her small fishing village and traditional family behind to join a radical new social movement. At its head is a charismatic leader, Jesus of Nazareth, who promises that the world is changing. Mary is searching for a new way of living, and an authenticity that is denied her by the rigid hierarchies of the day. As the notoriety of the group spread and more are drawn to follow Jesus’ inspirational message, Mary’s spiritual journey places her at the heart of a story that will lead to the capital city of Jerusalem, where she must confront the reality of Jesus’ destiny and her own place within it.
Mary Magdalene is scheduled to open on March 30th 2018, but it may change since that was a date given to it by The Weinstein Company. [IndieWire]
Show of hands, who is really excited for James Cameron’s Avatar sequels? Anybody? It’s been a long time since Cameron hit the $2.7B mark with the first movie in 2009, and I think opinions on it have soured. Record breaking it may have been, but there wasn’t a lot of demand to see more. Cameron has been steadfast in returning to the world of Pandora, though, but even he recognizes, as voiced in a new Vanity Fair piece, that none of the four proposed sequels are guaranteed. Each film will need to be successful to see his entire vision through to the end…
”It was highly optimistic that we could start quickly until scripts are written. If there’s no scripts, there’s nothing, right? The scripts took four years. You can call that a delay, but it’s not really a delay because from the time we pushed the button to really go make the movies [until now,] we’re clicking along perfectly. We’re doing very well because of all the time that we had to develop the system and the pipeline and all that. We weren’t wasting time, we were putting it into tech development and design. So when all the scripts were approved, everything was designed. Every character, every creature, every setting. In a funny way it was to the benefit of the film because the design team had more time to work.”
He continued…
“Most of the actors, the key principals, have all read all four scripts, so they know exactly what their character arcs are, they know where they’re going, they know how to modulate their arc now across the first two films. We all know where we’re supposed to be dramatically in the saga, and that’s great. Let’s face it, if ‘Avatar 2‘ and ‘3‘ don’t make enough money, there’s not going to be a ‘4‘ and ‘5.’ They’re fully encapsulated stories in and of themselves. It builds across the five films to a greater kind of meta narrative, but they’re fully formed films in their own right, unlike, say, ‘The Lord of the Rings‘ trilogy, where you really just had to sort of go, ‘Oh, shit, all right, well I guess I better come back next year.’ Even though that all worked and everybody did.”
It’s worth noting that most of Cameron’s career has been about exceeding expectations. Nobody thought Avatar would be a hit much less the highest-grossing movie of all time. If anybody can quiet the critics, of which I am definitely one, it’s Cameron so I should probably keep my skepticism to myself.
Avengers 4 has long been pitched as both an ending and a beginning to the Marvel Cinematic Universe; a clear break between the old and something new. With the contracts up for the original crew, such as Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner, and Scarlett Johansson, it’s been clear that the torch needs to be passed. This seems to be a mandate at Disney overall; remember Rian Johnson is tackling a new Star Wars trilogy with a very different focus. If Marvel is attempting something similar, what could that entail?
2018 will mark a decade since Iron Man launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe into the stratosphere, but don’t worry, it’s not coming to an end any time soon. Remember how we were all shocked when Kevin Feige said three years ago that Marvel has everything planned out through 2028? He gave an update of sorts to that in a very extensive (must-read worthy) piece from Vanity Fair, saying “[We’re] 22 movies in, and we’ve got another 20 movies on the docket that are completely different from anything that’s come before – intentionally.”
Disney CEO Bob Iger added, “we’re looking for worlds that are completely separate – geographically or in time – from the worlds that we’ve already visited.”
These are all good things. If there’s a complaint to have about Marvel it’s the lack of diversity. They’ve started to turn that around with Black Panther and Captain Marvel, but there’s always room for more. With so much time and so many characters, I’m hoping we see some stories set in the Savage Land, or the Negative Zone. And of course we gotta have a female team movie, right?
So strap in. The Marvel Cinematic Universe as we know it is about to come to an end. Feige teases, “There will be two distinct periods. Everything before Avengers 4 and everything after. I know it will not be in ways people are expecting.”
Michael Pena’s sci-fi flick Extinction is…well, looking pretty damned extinct. The film, which he joined last February and was accompanied by Lizzy Caplan and Mike Colter, has been pulled from Universal’s schedule. This despite having a release date in January 2018. Why?
THR has the news but they don’t have a reason. I mean, we could toss a few speculative theories out there but what would be the point? The film was shot and presumably completed by Ben Young and was a man whose nightmare of losing his family turns into a reality when an otherworldly force invades the planet. The man comes to find an inner strength to keep his family safe from harm. James McAvoy had been eyeing the lead role for a while before Pena came aboard. Now it looks like we won’t see either of them save the day.
Oh well. It’s not like we won’t have plenty of opportunities to see the cast elsewhere. Pena will fight terrorism on horseback alongside fellow Marvel-ite Chris Hemsworth in 12 Strong, not to mention his return for Ant-Man & the Wasp; Caplan may be joining Channing Tatum in that Gambit movie, and Colter has a second season of Luke Cage when he’s not busy running through the dreams of women everywhere hoping he’ll ask them for a cup of coffee.
