Fired Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn has a lot of supporters who want to see him return. The cast of Marvel’s blockbuster franchise issued a statement to that fact, and the director’s fans have been vocal about it, as well. We’d been led to believe there was a base of support for Gunn within Disney that was going to make one final effort to bring him back for Vol. 3. While Variety confirms an effort was definitely made, Disney is choosing to stand by their decision.
Gunn and his talent agency made a big push for him to be reinstated, but it doesn’t look to be happening. A meeting took place between Gunn and Disney studio chairman Alan Horn, which apparently was “civil and professional” according to sources, but it was done simply as a courtesy to the filmmaker. As for Marvel’s Kevin Feige, who was said to be in Gunn’s corner on this issue, he was out of town and unable to attend but will stand by Disney’s decision.
It does look as if Gunn’s original script will be used, which should cut down on the chances of production being delayed any further. However, a new director will need to be found and it’s expected whoever is named will want to “put a polish” on the script to give it their own flavor.
And maybe that’s just going to be the end of it until a new director is hired for Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.Certainly this has been one of the most volatile periods for a Marvel Studios machine that has been relatively stable and controversy-free over the last decade. The best thing for everybody might be to just let this go. That’s where star Chris Pratt’s head is at right now, telling the Associated Press…
“It’s not an easy time,” Pratt said. “We all love James and he’s a good friend of ours, but we also really love playing the Guardians of the Galaxy. It’s a complicated situation for everybody. And you know, we just want to move forward and do what’s right and be the best people we can be.”
Cooky stand-up comic finds love while battling fledgling stardom. Ok, so it’s not the MOST used story-line but we’ve definitely seen it before. The thing is, we’ve seen everything before, it’s all about who gives it to us that makes the difference. All About Nina, which is already generating buzz after being nominated in the “Best Narrative Feature” category at TIFF this year, stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead and Common as the aforementioned comic and love interest, respectively. Movie trailers are like the first 3 months of any relationship, you know that time when you only show your positive traits and DEFINITELY don’t leave your skid-marked boxers laying around, so they aren’t to be trusted. You need to take the pieces of what they show you and discern what that says about the movie. In this case, that’s the appeal of the leads. Common, who I’m pretty sure is related directly to Jesus, comes off the way he always does…soulful, deliberate, and genuinely kind (I may have a man crush but that’s not what we’re talking about here). Mary Elizabeth Winstead who, despite her geek and indie cred, has been underplayed at box offices, seems to get to really stretch her wings, showing a more funny and vulnerable side that I haven’t seen in her previous work. The two play as a true yin and yang throughout the trailer and have obvious chemistry. If this peek into the film holds true then I’d say were in for more then another throw away rom-com.
I don’t know if there were a lot of people excited for the American remake of Oscar-winning foreign film Toni Erdmann, but one of the reasons to be interested is now gone. The film was to feature Kristen Wiig and the anticipated return of Jack Nicholson to the big screen, but the legendary actor has now left the production amid a flurry of changes.
No reason was given for Nicholson’s departure, but it would have been his first movie since 2010’s How Do You Know. Kristen Wiig is sticking around, though, and will play the stressed out, career-driven daughter who is taught life lessons in the most chaotic way possible by her father. The original movie was written and directed by Maren Ade, and won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.
That’s not the only major switch going on as screenwriter Lisa Cholodenko of The Kids Are All Right fame, will now take over as director. She had taken over as writer when Lena Dunham and Jenni Konner previously backed out.
These changes may end up being for the best, but a lot is going to depend on who replaces Nicholson. [TheWrap]
That Bruce Lee should be a character in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon A Time In Hollywood shouldn’t be a surprise. The director has long been a fan of the legendary martial artist, as anybody who has seen Kill Bill would know. The only question was who he would cast in the role, which is admittedly a pretty heavy lift for anybody. Well, now we know, and it’s a refugee from Marvel’s failed Inhumans series.
The Wrap has confirmed that Mike Moh will play Bruce Lee in Tarantino’s star-studded film, which we know is set during the time of the Manson Family murders. Moh played Triton on Marvel’s critically-panned Inhumans, and he has to consider this a super-duper upgrade from that. He also played Ryu in the Street Fighter: Assassin’s Fist web series. Moh recently tweeted a heartfelt tribute to Lee on the 45th anniversary of his death, so it’s clear he has a tremendous fondness for him.
He joins a cast that includes *deep breath* Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Timothy Olyphant, Burt Reynolds, Damian Lewis, Luke Perry, Dakota Fanning, Clifton Collins, Keith Jefferson, Emile Hirsch, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Scoot McNairy, Al Pacino, Nicholas Hammond, Zoe Bell, Kurt Russell, James Marsden, and more. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood opens July 26th 2019.
Spike Lee’s latest, BlacKkKlansman, is a tour de force from the filmmaker and one of the best of his career. It’s a powerful work telling the true story of African-American police officer Ron Stallworth (John David Washington), the first ever for Colorado Springs, who teams with his Jewish partner Flip Zimmerman (Adam Driver) to infiltrate the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. The film opened strong last weekend, becoming Spike’s highest-grossing debut in over a decade.
To help celebrate, we are fortunate enough to offer you a special BlacKkKlansman prize pack that includes a copy of Ron Stallworth’s book, signed by the author himself; a digital download of the film’s funky soundtrack; and a poster signed by Spike Lee, John David Washington, Ron Stallworth, Topher Grace, and Laura Harrier.
Entering is simple. Complete the required steps in our Rafflecopter contest form below. Complete all of the steps for more chances to win. It’s that easy. Winners will be selected on Friday, August 17th and notified by email. Good luck!
BlacKkKlansman is in theaters now and will expand to more theaters this weekend.
“Are you satisfied with your care”? I don’t know about you, but the friendship between Hiro and his loyal robot pal Baymax in Big Hero 6 gets me every time, and don’t even get me started on The Iron Giant. There’s just something about a kid and their android pal that is just awesome, and that makes Netflix’s animated film Next Gen one to have on the radar. Plus it’s made even better by having John Krasinski as the robot’s voice.
Next Gen follows a young girl named Mai who forms a friendship with a killer robot she discovers in a secret lab. In a world full of robots, her newfound friend not only has personality, but an arsenal with which to stop a villain’s plan for world domination. Charlyne Yi, David Cross, Jason Sudeikis, Michael Pena, and Constance Wu lend their voices, as well.
The film is directed by animation vets Kevin R. Adams and Joe Ksander in their directorial debut, and they’ve given it a look that leans more towards Laika than Pixar. It’s impressive enough that you’d think it something for the big screen but we get to watch it from the comfort of our couches, and that’s pretty cool.
Fame is a tricky, soul-sucking thing, and our obsession with celebrity is a well-documented component of pop culture. We want to know everything about someone famous, and we want them to fit our every desire and our every whim, and the line between being adoring and being toxic is a thin one. Those are all the points that first-time filmmaker Nick Fituri Scown is attempting to make in his debut “Pretty Bad Actress,” and while the satire reiterates those elements over and over again, there isn’t much about this film that adds anything unique or insightful to that analysis.
“Pretty Bad Actress” focuses on former child star Gloria Green (Heather McComb), who became phenomenally famous for playing Trudie Cutie, a “school-day nerd, after-school beauty,” and has since experienced a well-known fall from grace: struggling with addiction, involved in the death of a colleague, posing for Playboy magazine, checking into treatment, spending time behind bars, and, most importantly, starring in bad movie after bad movie. Gloria’s “downward spiral continues,” proclaims various magazines and tabloids, and she’s treated by almost everyone as a joke.
An exception, though, is devoted fan Dawnee (Stephanie Hodes), a high school student who is bullied constantly. Is she made fun of because of her obsession with Gloria, whom she ties into every school presentation? (Her teacher makes an uncomfortable face when she pitches a project about how the Holocaust and Gloria are the same, and his disgust is ours.) Or because she dresses like a child, with pigtails, a pleated skirt, and thick tights? Whatever the reasoning, she’s a target in school classrooms and hallways, and her loneliness is palpable.
But things change drastically for both Gloria and Dawnee when they’re kidnapped by a Trudie Cutie stalker (John Hensley) and tied up in the same basement. For Gloria, it’s a terrifying experience; for Dawnee, it’s the time of her life. And outside of that home, Gloria’s assistant Cheryl (Jillian Bell) and manager Al (Danny Woodburn) are attempting to figure out where she is — and how they can spin her disappearance for the best media coverage possible.
“Pretty Bad Actress” isn’t the kind of movie interested in mystery, so you can pretty much guess where all of the film’s threads are going in the first 20 minutes or so, meaning that the next hour of the movie doesn’t really deviate much from your first expectations. But what really works is the subplot involving Bell and Woodburn, who try to use their Hollywood-insider knowledge to leverage Gloria’s absence; are they really concerned about her, or do they just want to advance their own careers? “Is there any way to make it more sexy? Kinky?” a producer asks Al when he pitches a movie about her disappearance, and in a tense moment with Gloria, Cheryl keeps her phone on in case someone calls her with details about a deal. Those elements are tongue-in-cheek satirical, but they’re more impactful than a burgeoning friendship between Gloria and Dawnee, or shots of the stalker putting on lipstick and recreating some of Trudie Cutie’s ’90s outfits. The movie never develops a true threat of danger from the stalker, so the tension needed to make those elements believable isn’t really there.
It’s not that “Pretty Bad Actress” doesn’t make valid points about the cycle of celebrity, but that it doesn’t add much uniqueness to this conversation. As a satire, it has moments of dark humor (like when Gloria demands certain things from the stalker, like slim tampons and a protein bar, and we see that his groceries list has the exact opposite items listed, or when another producer demands that a story about Gloria’s disappearance include a male love interest), but for the most part, “Pretty Bad Actress” isn’t as pointed or insightful as it could be.
If it feels like a long time since you saw a new movie from Steve McQueen, it’s because five years have passed since his acclaimed 12 Years A Slave. The wait appears to have been worth it based on what we know of his crime drama, Widows, which boasts one of the best casts of the year and a script by Gone Girl author Gillian Flynn.
Led by Oscar winner Viola Davis, Widows centers on a group of widowed women who decide to complete the same dangerous heist that got their husbands killed. Michelle Rodriguez, Cynthia Erivo, and Elizabeth Debicki play the other wives, who are taking this a lot more seriously than the lady criminals in Ocean’s 8. Liam Neeson, Colin Farrell, Manuel Garcia Rulfo, Brian Tyree Henry, Garret Dillahunt, Jon Bernthal, Carrie Coon, Robert Duvall, Jacki Weaver, Daniel Kaluuya, Andre Holland, and Lukas Haas co-star. Yep, definitely one of the best if not the best ensemble we’re likely to see this awards season.
Did The Fault In Our Stars have you bawling like a child with a skinned knee? Eyes still get dusty at Me and Earl and the Dying Girl? Then you might want to have some Kleenex ready if checking out After Everything, Hannah Marks and Joey Power’s directorial debut which again finds young love tested by a terminal illness.
Jeremy Allen White (Shameless) and It Follows star Maika Monroe are the lovely young couple at the center of this story. He plays a spirited NYC kid who meets and falls for Mia (Monroe) at about the same time he’s hit with a cancer diagnosis. Together they must deal with the challenges life has thrown at them, and learn to stay happy despite all of the obstacles.
Surrounding the lead duo is a great supporting cast that includes the busy Sasha Lane, Marisa Tomei, Gina Gershon, Olivia Luccardi, Dean Winters, and Joe Keery.
After Everything debuted earlier this year at SXSW and I don’t recall hearing much about it. The trailer is impressive, and seems to keep a pretty uplifting feel about it despite the subject matter. The film hits VOD and select theaters on October 12th.
Who doesn’t love a story about man’s best friend? Well, I guess a lot of you if the response to Dog Days is any indication. Well, here’s a much better one. Alpha, the tough yet heartwarming survival tale of a prehistoric hunter’s unexpected bond with a feral wolf, is one of the summer’s most pleasant surprises and will have you giving Spot a few extra treats after dinner.
Billed as “the incredible story of how mankind discovered man’s best friend”, Alpha has all of the heart-tugging moments we expect from a story about a boy and his favorite pet. But there’s also a tremendous amount of grit and dirt under its nails, and I can only guess that has to be the influence of writer/director Albert Hughes, who brought such gritty realism with Menace II Society so many years ago. Set 20,000 years ago somewhere in the rugged European steppes, a pack of tribal hunter-gatherers strike a daring attack on a herd of Steppe bison. Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is the young son of the chief Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), kind of heart, but good at crafting lethal weapons. He’s not ready for his first hunt, though, and is gored over a cliff’s edge. Believing his son dead and now walking with the spirits, the chief leaves to finish the hunt and nourish his people.
But the sensitive Keda is not dead; he clings to life as tightly as he clings to the cliffside. He tumbles back down to earth, busting up his leg and making an already-treacherous journey home more dangerous. The weather won’t help. The terrain is rugged and unforgiving, but it’s the snows that will finish him if he doesn’t make it back quickly. That is if the wolves and hyenas don’t eat him first. It’s a pack of wolves that nearly does it, but Keda is quick with his knife and cuts one. While the others flee, Keda tends to the injured animal, feeds it, cares for it. They both have a journey to make, and slowly they begin to rely on one another to see it through.
Alpha is a straight-line adventure, a prehistoric road trip movie if you will, and as such it’s really a story about evolution and growth. A metaphor for the struggle any boy takes to becoming a man, Alpha finds Keda and his newfound friend enduring a series of hardships. But the biggest fight is internal, as Keda must overcome self-doubt that he can be the leader his father needs him to be. Much like the alpha of any wolfpack, leader is a title that isn’t given, but is “won through courage”. It’s just one of many lessons Tau teaches Keda that bear fruit later on, while the wolf, which he eventually names Alpha, teaches him a thing or two about loyalty.
Hughes dreamed up the story himself, and he smartly decides to keep it simple with the focus on Keda and Alpha’s friendship. Through harsh, frigid blizzards and sabretooth tiger attacks, a number of fun sequences build our investment in the duo. We see Keda accidentally invent the game of fetch while trying to drive Alpha away; we see them splashing around in the river, catching fish, and of course there is a lot of hunting. Smit-McPhee doesn’t get a lot to say and what he does is in some ancient language subtitled for our reading pleasure. But he’s physically expressive, so that we understand his pain at being disconnected from his family. We also see the joy at the connection he forms with Alpha.
It’s kill or be killed, and Alpha doesn’t shy away from the harsh realities Keda faces on his quest home. Some of the time-lapsed views of the terrain resemble computer screensavers but Hughes does a good job with the CGI predators always nipping at Keda’s heels. At only 90 minutes in length, Alpha sinks its teeth into the story quickly and lets go at just the right time. Along with Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs this is a pretty good year for movies that celebrate man’s love of canines, and their devotion to us.
