Having never watched a single episode of Doctor Who I can’t speak to the overall geekiness of the series itself, but I know its fandom and they are weird. But they are also rabid and devoted, so Matt Smith should know what he’s in for now that he’s joined the cast of Star Wars: Episode 9, because they don’t get more fanatical than Star Wars die-hards.
Smith has joined J.J. Abrams’ Star Wars: Episode 9, and of course we have no idea what his role will be. That said, some are already getting out there to speculate him as a villain of the First Order, and given his recent heelish turn in Terminator Genisys I suppose it makes sense. Obviously, Smith has played on the side of the angels before, too, and we won’t really know what he’s up to until somebody at Lucasfilm confirms it.
As far as new faces go, Smith joins fellow newbies Keri Russell, Dominic Monaghan, and Richard E. Grant. Star Wars: Episode 9 opens December 20th 2019.
When Jessica Chastain set into motion plans to produce and star in the action film Eve, she couldn’t have known the hiring of director Matthew Newton would lead to so much trouble. But it did; past allegations of domestic abuse surfaced against Newton and he left the project in short order. Now Chastain is turning to an old friend to fill in the void; Tate Taylor, her director on The Help.
Taylor has come aboard to direct Eve, which we still know precious little about except it will be character driven and have Chastain in the title role. The script was also penned by Newton but one has to think Taylor, who typically writes the movies he directs, will take a crack at it. He previously worked with Chastain on her hit film, The Help, and has since gone on to continued success with Get On Up and The Girl On the Train.
Taylor and Chastain will then reteam on The Eyes of Tammy Faye, which is presumably a biopic about televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker. [THR]
After venturing into an alien realm in Annihilation and walking the halls of the White House in Jackie, Natalie Portman is entering the most dangerous territory yet: the pop music business. In Brady Corbet’s Vox Lux she plays an international pop star and her rise to the top of the charts. The film begins in the year 1999 and moves into the present day, in the hours leading up to a major concert event.
In the brief teaser we see Portman in her role as Celeste, looking like a cross between Lady Gaga and her character from Black Swan. Clearly this is going to be a centerpiece role for Portman, but she’s surrounded by an impressive cast that includes Jude Law, Stacy Martin, Jennifer Ehle, and Raffey Cassidy.
Corbet moved away from acting and into his directorial debut three years ago with The Childhood of a Leader, which earned raves at Venice. So it’s no wonder he’s bringing Vox Lux there this year, when it will have its world premiere on September 4th.
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of The Nun, the latest and darkest chapter in The Conjuring universe!
SYNOPSIS: When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest (Demián Bichir) with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows (Taissa Farmiga) are sent by the Vatican to investigate. Together they uncover the order’s unholy secret. Risking not only their lives but their faith and their very souls, they confront a malevolent force in the form of the same demonic nun that first terrorized audiences in “The Conjuring 2,” as the abbey becomes a horrific battleground between the living and the damned.
The screening takes place on Wednesday, September 5th at 7:00pm at AMC Mazza Gallerie. If you’d like to attend, simply register at the Warner Bros. ticketing site here. Please remember that all screenings are first come first served and having passes does not guarantee entry. You will want to arrive early to ensure receiving a seat.
Enjoy the show! The Nun hits theaters on September 7th.
On the surface, Drew Goddard’s awesomely-titled Bad Times at the El Royale bears striking resemblance to his prior film, The Cabin in the Woods. A group of strangers holed up in a mysterious, remote place where danger lurks around every corner and the guests all have secrets. Hey, it worked the first time, right? But if there’s one thing we can take away from the latest trailer it’s that despite some similarities, Goddard is offering a Hellish new experience for us to check-in to.
A 1960s crime noir at its heart, Bad Times at the El Royale stars a shirt-optional Chris Hemsworth, Jon Hamm, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, and Jeff Bridges as five strangers, each with secrets to hide, as they spend one wild night at the strange, novelty hotel that sits astride the Nevada/California border.
“This is not a place for a priest, father”, says the hotel clerk to Bridges’ character. Must be all the gambling and murder he’s referring to.
Also starring Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman, and Nick Offerman, Bad Times at the El Royale opens October 18th.
At this point movies that take place entirely on computer screens are nothing new. We’ve had a few of them, mostly horrors, and for the most part they’ve all been terrible. But it’s not necessarily the presentation that doomed them to fail; it’s the lack of a compelling story that makes staring at a computer window for two hours worth it. Might as well stay at your work desk if that’s the case. Fortunately, this isn’t a problem for Searching, the much buzzed-about thriller that marks the directorial debut by Aneesh Chaganty, who impressively uses the technology we’re familiar with to craft a mystery that will leave you on the edge of your seat.
Chaganty doesn’t just see the technology as a gimmick, but a useful cinematic tool integral to connecting us with the central whodunit the same way so many of us are connected to our Facebook accounts. It starts right from the beginning with a tear-jerking video montage, taking us through the life of Margot Kim (Michelle La), as she grows up with her parents David (John Cho) and Pamela (Sarah Sohn). We see the happy times, the first day of school, cooking dinner in the kitchen, but also the heartbreak of Pamela’s cancer diagnosis and eventual death, seen through missed Google calendar appointments and heard through increasingly somber music.
The power of technology has kept Margot and David connected over the years, but tragedy has a way of driving an emotional wedge between survivors, and it’s interesting to see how Chaganty pits these competing forces against one another. David’s work requires him to be online at the computer all of the time, but it’s also how he keeps tabs on Margot through frequent video chat conversations. He’s a bit of a helicopter dad, constantly hovering over her and keeping in close contact whether she wants it or not. When he suddenly stops hearing from her, after a night that she made an unanswered call to him at an odd hour, it gets his attention. When David realizes she left her all-important laptop at home, he gets scared. More clues start to pile up that something has gone terribly wrong; a missed piano lesson, a mysterious cash withdrawal from the bank. A call is made to the police, where it’s answered by dogged detective Rosemary (Debra Messing, in an oddly buttoned-up role for her) who jumps right into the case with both feet. She promises to get David answers, and he promises to help by digging through her social media history to uncover just who his daughter really was.
Searching is a clever title in that it has multiple meanings. Of course there’s the crime procedural aspect of investigating a missing persons case, but there’s also David’s search for meaning into his own daughter. Chaganty chronicles David’s search through numerous conversations with the people on Margot’s various friend lists and address books, his desperation growing as it becomes clear how little he actually knows about his own child. As he uses inventive tactics to backdoor his way into Margot’s accounts, tactics I’m afraid some enterprising social media trolls will probably use if they aren’t already, David begins to doubt whether his initial instincts about what happened are correct.
Never ones to keep us bored with endless chat windows, Chaganty and co-writer Sev Ohanian even find ways to take us away from David’s desk through the most intense Google Maps screens you’ve probably ever seen. As this puzzler unfolds every one of those windows littering David’s monitor becomes a clue that you’re trying to fit into a whole. While the case has enough twists to keep us guessing and one Hell of a shock ending, it’s John Cho’s performance that is the glue holding this together. He’s pretty much in every single frame and we’re with him through each gut-wrenching reveal, the toughest being that moment when David discovers there’s so much that he didn’t know about Margot’s life.
The high level of tension isn’t sustainable all the way through, but so much of Searching will have you riveted that it’s a tiny glitch in a well-constructed machine.
Eventually it will become common knowledge that Quentin Tarantino has cast everyone he knows in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The cast for his big Manson-era film is not only huge but basically a who’s who of today’s top stars, and while the latest addition to the cast is pretty much unknown around these parts the role he’s taking is of someone we are all quite familiar with.
According to THR, Tarantino has cast little-known actor Rafal Zawierucha in the role of controversial director Roman Polanski. It was inevitable this part would be filled as Polanski plays a key role in the film which takes place during the time of Sharon Tate’s murder, not long after the two were married and she was pregnant with their child. Also joining the film are Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor and Emmy-winning Empire creator Danny Strong, plus The Handmaid Tale‘s Sydney Sweeney. They become part of a killer ensemble that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Burt Reynolds, Damian Lewis, and Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, Lena Dunham, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and dozens more.
You can’t open a Polanski film around here without it stirring things up due to his past transgressions, but hopefully just having him as a character in Tarantino’s film won’t make any waves.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood opens July 26th 2019.
Contradiction Alert: I don’t really dig horror movies, but I’m a fan of haunted houses and especially haunted attractions. So what does that mean for Hell Fest, the new horror film set a creepy amusement park that turns into a bloodbath? I don’t know, but the new red band trailer has me wanting to pull up a seat and find out.
The biggest draw for me is the talent behind the camera because I sure don’t recognize anybody other than Candyman himself Tony Todd in front of it. Most attractive of all is co-writer Blair Butler, who video game nerds will remember from her many hosting gigs on G4’s X-Play and Attack of the Show. She co-wrote the script with Leatherface writer Seth M. Sherwood, with Gregor Plotkin of Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension behind the camera. Lots of bonafides there, I think.
Here’s the synopsis: A masked serial killer turns a horror themed amusement park into his own personal playground, terrorizing a group of friends while the rest of the patrons believe that it is all part of the show. College student Natalie is visiting her childhood best friend Brooke and her roommate Taylor. If it was any other time of year these three and their boyfriends might be heading to a concert or bar, but it is Halloween which means that like everyone else they will be bound for HELL FEST – a sprawling labyrinth of rides, games, and mazes that travels the country and happens to be in town. Every year thousands follow Hell Fest to experience fear at the ghoulish carnival of nightmares. But for one visitor, Hell Fest is not the attraction – it is a hunting ground. An opportunity to slay in plain view of a gawking audience, too caught up in the terrifyingly fun atmosphere to recognize the horrific reality playing out before their eyes. As the body count and frenzied excitement of the crowds continues to rise, he turns his masked face to Natalie, Brooke, Taylor and their boyfriends who will fight to survive the night.
Hell Fest hits theaters on October 28th, just in time for when you return from that haunted cornfield maze on Halloween.
Because you demanded it, the world’s most bumbling super spy is back. After Rowan Atkinson’s two Johnny English movies combined for $320M worldwide, he’s getting back in the field for a third time with Johnny English Strikes Again, and apparently he’s as much of an idiot as ever.
Atkinson returns to the role that will probably define his career no matter what he does. When a super-hacker reveals the identities of every undercover agent in Britain, the only man left to save the day is English, who had retired from active duty but not from being an active moron. He’s sent to the south of France where he’s dumbfounded by all that new-fangled virtual reality technology, magnetic boots, and beautiful women like Olga Kurylenko.
Directed by David Kerr with Emma Thompson, Ben Miller, Jake Lacy, and Adam James co-starring, Johnny English Strikes Again opens October 26th.
Ethan Hawke is coming off a career-best performance in Paul Schrader’s First Reformed, and has his latest directorial effort Blaze just arriving in theaters. He remains an indie stalwart who will forever be linked to films like the Before Sunrise trilogy and Boyhood, but Hawke hasn’t been against starring in the occasional mainstream studio film. So it’s clear he has at least some respect for the studio system, but if you think that extends to an appreciation of superhero movies, you’d be very wrong.
Speaking with The Film Stage, Hawke brings up the age-old discussion of business vs. creativity, saying that blockbuster films are pushing out the artistic works of some of our best filmmakers. And of course, he can’t help taking a shot at comic book films in the process…
“So many things get lost in the cracks and if those big names are getting lost, where are the ‘Gattacas’ of right now? It might be like other art forms where it might take 50 years to curate what’s happening right now. That’s why film festivals have become so important because you guys at film festivals are like curators of, like, what does the world need to be paying attention to. What should be seen? If we didn’t have these festivals, big business would crush all these smaller movies.”
“Now we have the problem that they tell us ‘Logan’ is a great movie. Well, it’s a great superhero movie. It still involves people in tights with metal coming out of their hands. It’s not Bresson. It’s not Bergman. But they talk about it like it is. I went to see Logan cause everyone was like, ‘This is a great movie’ and I was like, ‘Really? No, this is a fine superhero movie.’ There’s a difference but big business doesn’t think there’s a difference. Big business wants you to think that this is a great film because they wanna make money off of it.”
He comes off like a super snob, and a little bit of a hypocrite. If he’s really so offended by the fantastical nature of a film like Logan, then what’s that mean for a vampire movie like Daybreakers, which Hawke happily starred in? What’s the difference? Or Valerian? Or Gattaca? To me it’s all different forms of science-fiction. Plus, as the guy who gave us the wretched Getaway he has some nerve commenting on the quality of anybody else’s movie.
