With things so bad here on the ground is it any wonder moviegoers want to turn their attention towards the skies again? One of this year’s most acclaimed dramas is Damien Chazelle’s First Man, about Neil Armstrong’s historic walk on the moon. And now a new film about one of NASA’s most memorable missions is on the way in The Challenger, and as you probably guessed by the title this one won’t have such a happy ending.
Multi-time Oscar nominee Michelle Williams will play teacher/astronaut Christa McAuliffe in The Challenger, which chronicles the doomed space flight. Like so many others I’ll never forget where I was that day, January 28th 1986, when McAuliffe, who had become a national celebrity as part of NASA’s Teachers in Space program, took off into the skies with the other six members of her team. Our elation turned to horror about a minute later when the Challenger shuttle exploded, and everyone inside was killed. It was such a pivotal, heartbreaking moment, and as it was broadcast on live TV the impact on millions was devastating.
Williams will be working with director Martin Zandvliet, best known for the acclaimed 2015 war drama Land of Mine and the recent Jared Leto gangster film, The Outsider. [Deadline]
When your family gets together for Thanksgiving dinner, do you have a “no politics at the dinner table” ban? Most do, and for obvious reasons. In today’s hyper-partisan political climate, worsened as so many things are by the election of Donald Trump, too many families and friendships have been irreparably torn apart. Let’s face it, family gatherings are already a powder keg of secrets, tensions, and petty grievances, but you throw Uncle Bob’s racist chain emails into the discussion and who knows what might pop off. With his directorial debut The Oath, Ike Barinholtz takes a look at this grim state of affairs and chooses to take it on with a dark but undeniably hilarious sense of humor, which he uses to teach a valuable holiday lesson.
While I laughed a lot at The Oath, it was also one of the scariest movies I’ve seen in months. Not because of the twisted, violent route it eventually takes but because I identified a little too much with Chris (Barinholtz), a left-leaning political junkie whose every waking moment is consumed by news of the moment. He has reason to be concerned, as the President has passed a Loyalty Oath, a pledge of solidarity with the current administration that comes with certain social and financial benefits to those who sign. Chris and his equally progressive wife Kai (Tiffany Haddish) are vehemently opposed to signing, even as the friends, co-workers, and family around them are caving. There aren’t any overt threats made against those who don’t sign, but clearly a distinction is being made by those in power, and protesters are being met aggressively.
It sounds like the origin to the origin of The Purge or something, and not like the start of a wild political satire from a cast full of talented comedians. The deadline to sign landing on Black Friday, Chris and Kai’s home becomes ground zero for a verbal war over the Oath, despite their own pledge to be apolitical for just one evening. Lighting up this bad boy are Chris’ conservative brother Pat (Jon Barinholtz), and Tomi Lahren-esque girlfriend Abbie (Meredith Hagner), while their parents (Nora Dunn and Chris Ellis) try to stay out of the sibling squabble. Then there’s Alice (Carrie Brownstein), Chris and Pat’s progressive sister, who is basically that one family member who tries to keep everyone happy, putting her own beliefs aside to keep the peace. However, when a pair of government agents (John Cho and Billy Magnussen) show up making subtle threats encouraging Chris to sign, everybody goes off the rails.
Barinholtz’s politics shine through in his depiction of Chris, but he actually does a great job of staying fair and balanced (intended) to both sides of the ideological spectrum. His film is about the danger of political extremism in all of its forms, Chris often finds his stated beliefs challenged in unexpected ways by those he thinks support him most. We’re invited to laugh at his many hypocrisies and holier than thou rhetoric, often aimed at his brother who is the classic ignorant, ultra-patriotic Fox News watcher. Flip on talk radio and you can hear a version of their rantings any time of day, but it’s a breath of fresh air to hear them and not take them so seriously. The balance gets thrown out of wack as the violence escalates, with the second half of The Oath barely resembling anything from earlier on. It’s a safe bet that some will relate more to the family comedy aspects more than the Twilight Zone stuff it steers into later, although the commentary remains sharp throughout.While there are terrific individual performances, most notably from Haddish who adds a maternal element to her usual sass, the strength is in the ensemble. I don’t know if Barinholtz encouraged improvisation but it sure feels like it, and with this cast he’d have been crazy not to.
No matter how far over the edge Barinholtz pushes things, and they go pretty damn far, he does it as a reminder of what’s truly important. No matter how ugly the discourse may get, family must always come first. Even when a tyrannical government comes knocking on the door, protecting those you love is all that really matters. No matter who you voted for, The Oath offers a little something to smile about during these heated political times.
Dick Cheney is not only one of the least popular politicians of all-time, but also one of the most dangerous. The man not-so-affectionally referred to as Darth Vader isn’t who you would normally see a lot of comedies made about but Adam McKay is going to give it a shot with Vice, and as promised yesterday we now have the first full trailer. I can already see Cheney smirking while watching it inside of his hyperbaric chamber.
Christian Bale’s transformation into Cheney is more shocking today than it was yesterday now that we get a longer look at his performance. In the opening scene we see Cheney being Cheney, taking a largely symbolic job like Vice President and changing it forever, becoming the most powerful second-in-command this country has ever seen. Not only does Bale look and sound the part but I’m surprised by how easily Sam Rockwell captured George W. Bush’s facial expressions and “aw shucks” naivete. We also get a look at Steve Carell as Donald Rumsfeld, a reunion with McKay and Bale after The Big Short, plus Amy Adams as Lynn Cheney. The rest of the cast includes Tyler Perry, Alison Pill, Lily Rabe, Bill Pullman, Jesse Plemons, Shea Whigham, Justin Kirk, Lisagay Hamilton, Shea Whigham and Eddie Marsan. Phew!
Is it me or does this look like a David O. Russell movie? Not that I’m complaining but if I didn’t know this was McKay I would swear Russell directed this.
There’s something refreshing about a good old fashioned Star Wars rumor. In this case we’ve got a couple of them about Jon Favreau’s Star Wars TV series, which is in production now. And that means you can expect to hear a lot more speculation about it, like who will star and who might be directing each episode.
These reports have surfaced from the generally reliable folks at Making Star Wars and Discussing Film, who say Game of Thrones and Wonder Woman 1984 actor Pedro Pascal is up for the lead role. Exactly what that role might be is unclear since nothing about the setting has been made official. However, it does appear to be set on the planet Mandalore and center on the warrior Mandalorians post-Return of the Jedi. Whether that means we can expect an appearance by Boba Fett, nobody knows.
As for who could be directing, Favreau, Dave Filoni, and Alan Taylor are all said to be on board. Favreau is an obvious choice since he’s spear-heading the whole thing, and obviously has a deep connection with Disney thanks to Iron Mans 1 & 2, The Jungle Book, and The Lion King. Taylor would be returning to TV after a couple of failed blockbusters in Terminator Genisys and Thor: The Dark World. He directed some of the best Game of Thrones episodes before jumping to the big screen. Filoni is the most exciting name here, though. He may not be a known commodity to those who only watch the live-action films, but he was the beloved creative voice behind Star Wars Rebels and Star Wars: The Clone Wars.
No word on when the 8-episode first season will kick off, but expect it to be soon after Disney’s streaming service launches.
The Lady Gaga/Venom war has begun. This unlikely battle is being waged as the singer’s acclaimed remake A Star is Born faces off against Sony’s brain-eating antihero Venom, and fans just can’t deal. While the Bradley Cooper-directed A Star is Born is a current critical darling and obvious Oscar contender, it’s Venom that will likely win the box office weekend by a wide margin. But not if Gaga’s “little monsters” have anything to say about it. Well, they do, and have been using Twitter to drive support away from Venom and towards their idol.
A Buzzfeed investigation revealed what anybody who has been monitoring geek Twitter has been seeing for a few days, which is that Gaga fans are tweeting fake Venom reviews, claiming the movie looks like some hot symbiote garbage. Initially it looked like another case of Russian trolls and bots because the tweets all looked so similar.
Beware of fake #Venom movie reviews. There are people trying to promote Lady Gaga’s #AStarIsBorn and are fabricating negative reviews. Look out for bots and only trust proper and regular reviewers. pic.twitter.com/v9xznuN5R7
I don’t pay much attention to Lady Gaga but even I have heard about her rabid “little monsters” fanbase, and the havoc they’ve caused. They’ve faced multiple charges of sexist and racist behavior, helped bully Ed Sheeran off of social media, and have embarrassed Gaga to such an extent she had to publicly ask them to tone it down. And these folks are pretty shameless in their assault, with one of them admitting “It’s us Gaga fans creating fake IDs to trash the ‘Venom’ premiere. They both are getting released on the same day, so we want more audience for ‘A Star Is Born.’”
This shit is beyond stupid, but it only gets worse as the pro-Venom crowd have begun creating their own fake reviews of A Star is Born, painting the film as perfect for the southern racist in your family.
Walked into #AStarIsBorn and was disappointed. Completely filled with Neo-Nazi propaganda and Bradley Coopers character constantly muttered the phrase the “South will rise again.” Taking my 8 kids and 9 grandchildren to see #Venom instead. If you don’t believe me see here: pic.twitter.com/TT01N1MzMB
Believe it or not it goes much deeper than this, but here’s the point. Feel free to go and see both Venom and A Star is Born this weekend. Or don’t see either. Go see The Hate U Give, instead. I hear that one’s pretty damn good.
As if the negative buzz for Dark Phoenix wasn’t bad enough, Fox decided to follow the film’s trailer debut by delaying the movie four months. Yeah, that looks good. Keep going with that. Fan reaction was exactly what you’d expect for a film that has been delayed on a couple of occasions, while facing reports of extensive reshoots and rewrites. The trailer’s release should have been a time for director Simon Kinberg to be singing the film’s praises, but instead he’s just doing a bunch of explaining.
In an interview with Collider, Kingberg says the reshoots weren’t anything major, just the typical studio-mandated stuff that comes with every blockbuster investment. He also talks specifically about what needed to be retooled, and his answer matches some of the previous reporting on this subject…
“Mostly we focused on the third act, both emotionally and in terms of the physical scale and the action of the third act that we adjusted. And then there were certain things in the first two acts of the movie—very few things, but to set up those changes in the third act we had to adjust some things in the first two acts so that all was fluid and felt consistent.”
Okay, so what about this latest delay and the unfortunate timing? While the trailer wasn’t terrible, in fact I liked it a lot, there weren’t a lot of people talking about it. Kinberg says the schedule change has nothing to do with audience reaction to the trailer, and about pumping up the visual effects and maximizing box office potential in China…
“It was a date, February 14th, that we initially liked for the movie but when we realized that we weren’t gonna have the visual effects ready to release it globally the way we wanted to, and the Gambit date opened up because it wasn’t gonna be ready for that June 7th date. We looked at that date versus the February 14th date, the studio did and we did, we felt like that June date was a bigger opportunity for us globally. More screens, more IMAX screens, a better chance to play in China where these movies have a massive following. What we found when we released the trailer was that 44, 45 million views of the trailer were in China alone… Specific for us, it is an opportunity to be a bigger movie day-and-date globally.”
The X-Men will return in Dark Phoenix on June 7th 2019. At least that’s the date for now but would anybody be surprised if it moves again?
Just when you thought that the age of the YA film was over, we get an adaptation of a YA book that completely knocks it out of the park!
Not by dealing with those post-apocalyptic future storylines that have outlived their usefulness, but instead sticking with something we see on the headlines daily, and showing us the lives of young people of color for a change. Inspired by the murder of Oscar Grant (there have been so many unarmed black people killed by police you have to google his to remember the specifics) and countless others, author Angie Thomas wrote a complex story that ended up on the New York Times Best-Seller list for 50+ weeks and captivated the nation as it dealt with the harsh realities of being black in America.
It’s actually surprising that The Hate U Give would get a theatrical adaptation. There haven’t been that many movies that have honestly dealt with such a raw topic. After all, it’s already to not only see this constantly in the headlines and see the actual footage on social media nowadays. Who wants to see such a painful thing show up on the big screen, where we usually go for escapism from the problems of our real lives. In addition to such a touchy subject, The Hate U Give also needs to be a good film. Needless to say, this film absolutely is essential viewing.
The film opens with “The Talk,” which most African Americans are familiar with and every parent has to painfully explain to their children. The unfair and harsh reality that you as a person of color have to operate by a different set of rules when dealing with the police as your life depends on it as you interact with them. We are introduced to Star (Amandla Stenberg), a young high school girl who has to navigate in two different worlds. The first is Star in her regular life where she lives in Garden Heights, a predominately black neighborhood with her family. He father Maverick (Russell Hornsby), a reformed ex-gang member who went to jail after taking the fall for another member in his crew has turned his life around and is a small business owner and wants his family to have deep roots in their community despite his wife Lisa (Regina Hall) wanting to move out of the neighborhood as it’s been plagued with drug and gang violence in recent years. Warts an all, Garden Heights is still home, and it’s where she is relaxed and the most like her true self. The other version of Star is Star 2.0, the high school version. She goes to an elite and mostly white school on the other side of town where she practices “code-switching,” where she can’t appear too “ghetto” to her white counterparts as she has to function in “their world.” Star is the model student, good grades, basketball player, even has a white boyfriend and the two of them deeply care for each other. Star has managed to keep those two personalities separate and live a comfortable life, until an unfortunate event happens.
While at a house party in Garden Heights, she runs into childhood friend Khalil (Algee Smith), whom she has not seen since they were younger. As the two reconnect and are having a good time, a fight breaks out at the party, which leads to shots going off. Khalil escorts his friend out of the party and they take a ride home. The two manage to bond even more over their times and even display possible romantic affections towards each other now that they are older and no longer little kids playing Harry Potter with each other. Unfortunately, Khalil’s car gets pulled over by the police for “failure to use the turn signal.” As seen from the trailer, Khalil grabs a hairbrush to brush his hair during the traffic stop and is gunned down by the officer.
From there on, that perfect world that she managed to keep all these years comes crashing down. She has to deal with the PTSD of seeing her friend killed by the police, her being detained by the police and the harsh interrogation by the police afterward. She’s now the sole witness to the crime and will probably be summoned to a grand jury for an upcoming trial. And she has to do all this while still maintaining those two different lives. Will her white classmates understand what it means to be a black person? Will her boyfriend? Author James Baldwin famously said, “to be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.” Star perfectly captivates that sentence in this film as the cruel realities of life as it seems as though the walls are closing in on her. Her white peers don’t understand, as evidenced by one of her friends Hailey (Sabrina Carpenter) giving her the “All Lives Matter” approach to the situation, even though they all don’t know she’s the witness to the crime. Her friends want to stage Black Lives Matter “protests,” just so they can skip school. Her uncle Carlos (Common) is a police officer who has to navigate both worlds, but tends to be more on the police’s side of the argument as evidenced by a heartbreaking conversation he has with her about what he would do in the same situation and even more heartbreaking when he honestly tells her what he would have done if the suspect was white. Persuaded to use her voice an testify by a local community organizer April (Issa Rae), Star wants to honor Khalil the best way she can, which puts a target on her back from the local gang leader King (Anthony Mackie), as Khalil was a member of them, and King doesn’t appreciate “snitches.”
What makes The Hate U Give good is how honest and raw the film is. The entire cast gives it their best. Regina Hall, who is mostly known for her comedic bits delivers a strong performance as Star’s mother, who only wants to make sure that the children are safe and come home to her. Russell Hornsby as Star’s father gives a strong performance as her father who from a young age prepared her for the life she would possibly have. Everything from having “the talk” to instilling the Black Panther’s 10-Point program. Their family is extremely blended (to the point of confusion) as Star has half and adjacent siblings, but her mother and father honor and respect each child, even if they aren’t their own children biologically as they help keep their rather large family together in light of the tragedy. Star’s boyfriend Chris (KJ Apa) actually also has a unique presence in the film. At first, he just seems whiney as he wants to be more involved in her life on the weekends as he cares for her. Being white, he doesn’t understand what it’s like to be black, and while he first says he “doesn’t see color,” he quickly changes his worldview and tries empathy, something her other white friend doesn’t do. Chris ends up a kind of unspoken MVP as he’s there for Star when she absolutely needs it and he gives her the space to do what she needs to do without involving himself. There is a very funny “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner” moment when Star’s father finally meets Chris and while interracial dating at this point is a societal norm, it’s still funny to see Russell Hornsby interacting with KJ Apa for that scene, one of the few comedic moments in an overly dramatic film. One person who took some getting used to was Anthony Mackie as a local kingpin of one of the gangs. It’s not that his performance was bad, it’s just that we are used to seeing him as either Clarence from 8 Mile or Falcon from all the Marvel Cinematic Universe films. He just doesn’t “feel” like the bad guy, but he manages to win you over with how menacing he is later in the film. Of course, the true star of the film is Star herself. Amandla Stenberg delivers the best performance of her career. She goes through just about every emotion in the film and in a perfect world, there would be Oscar buzz surrounding her for this film. Stenberg herself is very “woke” in real life and has spoken out about various issues. It’s also good to see she found a role that works with her personal politics as well and it helps deliver a strong performance.
With a third act ripped straight from the headlines, The Hate U Give will break your heart as well as give you hope as you see the real life that so many African-Americans have to deal with on a regular basis on the big screen in an honest and strong way, yet find a way to move forward. Director George Tillman Jr. captures the drama effectively, also shoots the chaotic nature of a protest-turned-riot very efficiently. The film not only deals with the subject of police shootings of African-Americans, but also shows us the nature of code-switching and the trouble of maintaining two different identities, something many African-Americans have to deal with constantly, whether it’s at school, or at work, being the “model minority” is taxiing, especially when those two worlds have to collide with each other. While this is a YA story, it doesn’t feel like one. It’s more universal, and grounded in our very own real world, which is what makes this such a powerful film.
Damn, the Russians have been busy! If you thought the extent of their social media manipulation was helping to install Donald Trump as President, think again. They had more nefarious motives in mind, like building backlash against Rian Johnson’s Star Wars: The Last Jedi.
When Johnson’s film opened last year it was met with unnaturally sharp criticism. Sure, the storyline was a detour from what fans had been accustomed to, but that wasn’t just it. There were segments of fandom who were especially outraged at the number of prominent female characters, of the supposedly progressive nature, and it all seemed to be used to create a wedge issue at a time when our pop culture is more influential than ever.
According to a study by Morten Bay, a research fellow at USC, nearly half of the negative Twitter discourse aimed at The Last Jedi was part of a Russian influence campaign. Examining roughly 1000 tweets aimed at Rian Johnson between December 2017 and July 2018, Bay discovered “Overall 50.9% of those tweeting negatively was likely politically motivated or not even human.” He continues, “A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls.”
So what’s the point of driving angry Star Wars fans into their separate corners? Well, what happens when you take the most popular franchise in the country and split its fanbase down ideological lines? Bay theorizes, “The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation.”
To be fair, you didn’t need to be a Russian troll to dislike The Last Jedi. That’s not what Bay is saying. But they took a film that was polarizing on its own and exacerbated the reaction to destablize our country just a little bit more. If that makes you wonder about the hours you spent arguing the merits of The Last Jedi on Twitter, well you probably should.
I don’t think we praise Christian Bale enough for his ability to transform for a role, to get so deeply invested into character that he becomes unrecognizable. Over the years he’s been willing to push the limits of his physical health for the roles he deeply believes in. And it appears with Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic Vice he has done it again.
The first trailer for Vice debuts tomorrow but ahead of that we’re getting a look at Bale in the role of the shadowy Vice President to George W. Bush. And it looks as if Bale has packed on the pounds again, just as he did for American Hustle (but refused to do for that Ferrari flick), to evolve into an older Cheney. In one image Bale kinda resembles the Richard Dreyfuss version of Cheney from Oliver Stone’s W. Let’s hope the performance is better.
McKay also dropped a teaser which includes a terrific tagline, “Some vices are more dangerous than others.” Love it! McKay has been knocking at the door of a purely political movie ever since The Other Guys and The Big Short, and I can’t wait to see how he tackles such a controversial figure.
Also starring Steve Carell, Amy Adams, Bill Pullman, Sam Rockwell, and Alison Pill, Vice opens Christmas Day. [Vanity Fair]
Excited to announce the VICE trailer is coming tomorrow morning – a snapshot into Dick Cheney’s wild, quiet and shadowy power. pic.twitter.com/ZDqlvFQPIS
Sony may not have a traditional Spider-Man movie under their umbrella at the moment, but they are moving full steam ahead as if they do. Later this week we’ll get Tom Hardy’s Venom movie, which feels like a remnant from their ambitious but aborted plans during the Andrew Garfield era. And later this year we’ll see a different take on Spider-Man with the animated Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which continues to look like one of the boldest takes on the character in some time.
Developed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the film takes place in an alternate universe and boasts multiple versions of Spidey: the fan-favorite Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), an aged Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), Spider-Gwen (Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker aka SP///dr (Kimiko Glen), and even Spider-Ham (John Mulaney). Additional voicework finds Mahershala Ali as Prowler, Lili Tomlin as Aunt May, Brian Tyree Henry as Jefferson Davis, and Liev Schreiber as Kingpin.
While the voice cast is great, it’s the dynamic, fluid CG animation that has won me over. Every time we see a little bit more of this movie it just makes me want to see the whole thing right now. I can’t wait. And I think I’m not alone, which is why the new Spider-Man video game sold over 3 million copies in just a few days. Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse opens December 14th.
