The Equalizer 2 marks the first sequel of Denzel Washington’s storied career, and it’s not as if there haven’t been plenty of opportunities. So there must be something really great about this story that captured his attention and that of director Antoine Fuqua, also returning for his first sequel ever. From what we’ve seen of the film it looks like a darker, more personal story, but one that still has plenty of Denzel engaging in ultra-violent vigilante action.
Denzel returns as former Black Ops agent Robert McCall, who has settled into a comfortable life as…a Lyft driver. What better way to get around town and do “good deeds” for those in need of his special set of skills. When someone close to him is killed, McCall seeks payback by dispatching those involved with extreme prejudice.
I find Denzel to be credible in virtually everything he does and The Equalizer movies are no different. He gets brutal in these flicks and the sequel looks like it goes way over the edge from what we would normally expect from him. That actually makes me want to see it more. I’m curious to see if this becomes a full-fledged Denzel trilogy. He kinda deserves one, doesn’t he? The guy who has avoided franchises all of his life getting one that is all for him?
Also starring Melissa Leo, Bill Pullman, and Pedro Pascal, The Equalizer 2 opens July 20th.
1. Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (review)- $150M
The $150M opening domestic weekend for Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom is certainly impressive, even if it’s considerably less than the $208M Jurassic World had in 2015. The bigger deal is the massive $711M it holds worldwide, after debuting internationally on June 6th. That’s an incredible number and virtually guarantees it’ll surpass $1B even if it makes less money stateside. It should keep a pretty strong hold through next week with only Sicario 2 as its primary competition before Ant-Man & the Wasp arrives in July. That said, the numbers are a bit lower than its predecessor, and one wonders if there will be any retooling before the already-announced and dated Jurassic World 3 in 2021.
2. Incredibles 2– $80.9M/$350.3M
Pixar’s Incredibles 2 had a massive bite taken out of it by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, but still managed a huge $80M second weekend and $350M domestically. That’s good for the seventh biggest second weekend ever, and honestly there are so many records being broken by Disney/Pixar movies at this point that they’re all becoming sorta trivial. Here’s what you need to know: Incredibles 2 is doing extremely well and has $485M worldwide. Will it top the $633M of its predecessor? That is still in question and will depend on the next two weeks.
3. Ocean’s 8– $11.6M/$100.3M
4. Tag– $8.2M/$30.3M
5. Deadpool 2– $5.2M/$304.1M
At $707M worldwide Deadpool 2 is now the fourth-largest R-rated film of all-time.
6. Solo: A Star Wars Story– $4M/$202.1M
7. Hereditary– $3.8M/$35M
8. Superfly– $3.3M/$15.2M
9. Avengers: Infinity War– $2.4M/$669.4M
10. Won’t You Be My Neighbor?– $1.8M/$4.1M
On this week’s Cinema Royale, Blackfilm.com’s WIlson Morales joins in to talk JURASSIC WORLD: FALLEN KINGDOM and if the Jurassic period is indeed over. With San Diego Comic-Con right around the corner we’ll talk about what to expect at Hall H, the Chris Hardwick controversy, and more! Plus news on the Star Wars spinoffs, The Last Jedi fan remake, Chloe Moretz on Kick-Ass 3, and directors for the Black Widow movie.
Nobody is worse at keeping secrets than Tom Holland. He routinely spoiled major details throughout the press tour for Avengers: Infinity War and will likely do so again when Avengers 4 roles around. If you were an interviewer and couldn’t trick him into revealing too much you weren’t trying hard enough. But sometimes Holland doesn’t even need to be tricked, he just goes and says too much on his own.
While I’m pretty sure this was intentional, it goes to show that Marvel is just letting Holland have fun with his reputation as a blabbermouth. On his Instagram page, Holland “accidentally” spoiled the title for his Spider-Man: Homecoming sequel.
A post shared by ✌️ (@tomholland2013) on Jun 23, 2018 at 5:39pm PDT
Makes sense. He IS pretty far from home right now, isn’t he? I mean, how far is death from Manhattan, anyway? Presuming he does come back to life after Thanos’ snap of the fingers, Spider-Man is rumored to go on some kind of Eurotrip in his sequel, a trip that will put him at odds against Jake Gyllenhaal as Mysterio.
At this rate Sony is going to have a cinematic universe as large and diverse as Marvel or Warner Bros., as their Spidey-verse continues to grow in exciting ways. It’s a smart move to make, filling up their roster for as long as they’ve loaned out Spider-Man to Marvel Studios. Then when/if they get him back he’s got something fully-formed to return home to. Pretty cool. And the latest rumored project is one of hte newest and most intersting characters from the Spider-Man comics, the Korean-American hero known as Silk.
Cindy Moon aka Silk was introduced in 2014, and was a high school classmate of Peter Parker’s. In fact, she was bitten by the same radioactive spider as him and developed similar powers, except she has organic webbing. She is then trained by the enigmatic Ezekiel in the use of her powers, but then kept hidden away in a secret bunker for years before she is eventually freed by Spider-Man.
Silk joins Venom, Silver & Black, Morbius, and Nightwatch as the projects Sony has in the works. This would put Sony on pretty special ground, building an entire movie and potential franchise around a Korean-American woman. Hopefully we’ll start learning more about this soon, and maybe we’ll see it become a greater priority with Silver & Black delayed. [TheWrap ]
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of Sicario: Day of the Soldado!
SYNOPSIS: In SICARIO: Day of the Soldado, the series begins a new chapter. In the drug war, there are no rules – and as the cartels have begun trafficking terrorists across the US border, federal agent Matt Graver (Josh Brolin) calls on the mysterious Alejandro (Benicio Del Toro), whose family was murdered by a cartel kingpin, to escalate the war in nefarious ways. Alejandro kidnaps the kingpin’s daughter to inflame the conflict – but when the girl is seen as collateral damage, her fate will come between the two men as they question everything they are fighting for.
The screening takes place on Wednesday, June 27th at 7:00pm at Landmark E Street. If you’d like to attend, simply go to the Sony ticketing site here and download one Admit-Two pass. Please remember that having passes does not guarantee entry and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure receiving a seat. Enjoy the show!
A film I missed at Sundance that had a lot of good buzz was Ethan Hawke’s latest directorial effort, Blaze, a biopic on little-known country and folk singer Blaze Foley. Hawke, who has directed two musical films already in 2014’s Seymour: An Introduction and 2006’s The Hottest State, cast newcomer Ben Dickey in the role of Foley, and co-wrote the film with Sybil Rosen, Foley’s lover played by Alia Shawkat.
Based on Rosen’s memoir, the film stars an impressive Charlie Sexton, Josh Hamilton, Alynda Segarra, Sam Rockwell, Wyatt Russell, Steve Zahn, Kris Kristofferson, and Hawke’s pal Richard Linklater. The film looks at Foley’s career as part of the Texas outlaw movement and the impact his music had on friends and fans. Foley’s time as a musician was marked by false starts and unfortunate events that continually held him back, and a reliance on alcohol didn’t help. Here is the official synopsis:
Directed by Ethan Hawke, “Blaze” stars newcomer Ben Dickey as Blaze Foley, the unsung songwriting legend of the Texas outlaw music movement that spawned the likes of Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson. The film weaves together three different periods of time, braiding re-imagined versions of Blaze’s past, present and future. The different strands explore his love affair with Sybil Rosen; his last, dark night on earth; and the impact of his songs and his death had on his fans, friends, and foes. The storyline terminates in a bittersweet ending that acknowledges Blaze’s profound highs and lows, as well as the impressions he made on the people who shared his journey.
I love the look of this film, with the tone and subject reminding me of Inside Llewyn Davis. It’s a little surprising Hawke didn’t take the role himself, I keep thinking back to how great he was as musician Chet Baker in Born to be Blue, but it looks as if he got a strong performance out of Dickey.
Lucasfilm finds itself in the awkward position of having to explain away a Star Wars movie’s failure, something that has never had to be done before. Solo: A Star Wars Story is only at the $350M mark worldwide, a number we’d expect it to have domestically by now, and at this rate it will be lucky to break $400M overall. It didn’t get better when a rumor surfaced that Lucasfilm had put “on hold” its spinoff films, which led to a rarely-seen denial of the story. So what exactly is the truth? As usual in these cases, the truth is somewhere in the middle.
THR reached out to their sources at Lucasfilm, and they say the spinoffs “haven’t slowed down”, but that the studio is “licking their wounds” over Solo’s poor performance. That should be good news for fans eager to see a Boba Fett or Obi-Wan Kenobi movie, both of which cotninue to be in development, albeit on different tracks.
Another insider adds, “It doesn’t mean those spinoffs don’t happen. It just means they’re trying to figure out how to make, and market, them differently.”
Let’s be clear here; Solo wasn’t just hurt because people don’t want to see a Han Solo movie. It had a mountain of bad buzz to cope with that lasted for months because of all the production troubles, director swaps, and more. I believe if things had run smoothly the film would have done much better. Audience confidence is always key.
“In light of the reaction to ‘Last Jedi’ and the performance of Solo, they are now just going to look at what’s coming in and seeing how good it is, before dating anything,” another insider noted. “It’s all pretty understandable.”
The status of the Boba Fett and Obi-Wan movies is interesting, though. The latter, which had Stephen Daldry in talks to direct, is unclear and nobody seems to want to comment on it right now. Ewan McGregor does appear willing to reprise his role from the prequel films, but who knows if he’ll even be asked? He’s going to be busy for a while starring in The Shining sequel, Doctor Sleep.
As for Boba Fett, it’s still moving forward with James Mangold directing and co-writing the script with Simon Kinberg. However, that’s far off in the distance because Mangold has his Ferrari biopic coming up first. And in the meantime, it’s looking like the Boba Fett movie is going to undergo significant changes to “reconfigure” it…
Sources say that after the underperformance of Solo, the project could now be reconfigured. The thinking is that if Han Solo, one of the most iconic characters in the Star Wars universe, couldn’t sustain a big-budget origin feature, then any Fett movie would have to be scaled down, since though the character is popular, he’s certainly less well-known to most moviegoers than the Corellian smuggler.
That sounds like a downsizing in budget, and thus a story is that a bit smaller in scope. I have an idea; why not just combine the Obi-Wan and Boba Fett movies? We already know from the prequels that their stories intersect, so come up with something that brings them together in a way that makes sense? We really don’t need multiple A Star Wars Story films at this point. One every few years is more than enough.
So what’s official right now? The films you probably already guessed are still on the docket: Star Wars Episode 9 is next, followed by a disconnected trilogy from Rian Johnson and a series the creators of Game of Thrones.
Netflix has been putting out dozens of original movies, but lately they’ve also begun to increase the size of those movies. They’re now putting out blockbuster level films, like last year’s Bright, Michael Bay’s Six Underground, and Martin Scorsese’s upcoming The Irishman. The latest to come from the streaming giant is post-apocalyptic thriller How It Ends, which stars Forest Whitaker and Theo James, two actors with plenty of experience with big studio projects.
The trailer promises a lot of action and a surface-level view of the plot, which looks pretty standard by genre standards. James plays a man who must team up with his estranged father-in-law (Whitaker) to get across the country and save his pregnant wife when a mysterious apocalyptic event is triggered. I like that they are keeping the circumstances surrounding the cataclysmic event a secret, and hopefully when revealed it makes this world a little more distinct.
The cast is solid but I’m really intrigued to see what Rosenthal can do with a movie of this scale. He’s mostly done smallish indies like Janney Jones and the vastly underrated A Single Shot, while his biggest studio movie was the domestic thriller The Perfect Guy. He’s also got a remake of Jacob’s Ladder on the way.
Also starring Kerry Bishe, Mark O’Brien, Grace Dove, and Kat Graham, How It Ends hits Netflix on July 13th.
For the most part on Cloak and Dagger, Tyrone and Tandy have been doing their own thing and not really interacting. Aside from their origin story when Tyrone saves Tandy, her trying to scam him in the first episode, and Tyrone teleporting (and almost killing her with a gun by accident), the two have been mainly separated from each other. However this week on Cloak and Dagger, we actually get to have Cloak AND Dagger together.
Following last week’s head-trippy voodoo ritual which had the two of them see each other’s dark side, they decided that it was finally time to meet and have a discussion about their powers as well as their unexplained interconnectedness. Tyron tries to tell her about his experience after the cleansing bath he took last week, but she laughs it off as tourist stuff that local New Orleanians put over on visitors, but then he starts making sense and telling her about her own problems that he shouldn’t know about.
This episode is not told in a straight linear format as their normal activities continue to intercut their conversation in the church together. While we see most of the episode with Tandy and Tyronne talking, most of the other scenes are what happens after their conversation in the church.
Tyrone is still having problems with his family, which all seem to stem from his anger over his brother’s death and not being able to properly process his grief after all these years. His parents want to try and get through to him, but he’s closed off. He feels he needs to right the wrong and get back at the corrupt police officer who killed his bother. Tandy tells him that he needs to run a con, the same way she did on him. In order to do that, he’ll need to learn as much as he can about the cop. Tandy recommends going to the police station. But what young black teen willingly goes into the police station in our current age? He comes up with the idea to report his bike stolen. He does his homework and stages the scene properly. He takes a bolt cutter and snaps his lock, takes pictures of the cut bold on his phone, and disposes of his bike. This gets the police to believe him. However, he gets nervous when he gets to the station and leaves. His father’s discovery of the bolt cutter makes him believe that Tyrone is up to no good. As a result, he takes his son into his old hood where he runs into his old Mardi Gras Indian group. There, it’s a sense of community and his father hopes that instead of doing petty crimes, he can focus on a Mardi Gras costume. Tyrone notices a cloak that was unfinished. His father is a little taken back as it was his brother’s costume. He promises that he will finish it to honor his brother. As a result, Tyrone and his father have reconnected.
Tandy on the other hand, is trying to work through the grief of her father dying, but her mother’s refusal to let go of her rage against the Roxxon Corporation. Her mother’s sleeping with a local lawyer (who’s married) named Greg to try and help out with her case. Tandy doesn’t trust the lawyer who thinks he’s just using her mom for sex, but after touching him and using her “light” powers, she sees the good in him, to the point that in a possible future, he could be a replacement father figure for her. From that point forward, Tandy trusts him and wants to even help him research what’s going on with the Roxxon Corporation. All seems well, she learned from Greg that Roxxon is still working on his father’s old research, meaning he really was a fall guy for something nefarious and he promises Tandy that he will get to the bottom of everything. Everything seems to be going well, until she, Greg, and her mother are having dinner together and Greg’s wife calls. This makes her mother realize that Greg isn’t the one for her and breaks up with him. Tandy comes to Greg’s office, later on, to try and talk to him about her mother as well as the Roxxon Corporation. However, the cleaning lady in his office is not a cleaning lady, but instead, she’s an assassin. Greg is murdered and then his office is set on fire. This is the first time we get to see the Roxxon Corporation as evil and ruthless as they are in the comics. So far in the movies and TV shows, they are just name-dropped as a rival to Stark Industries, or builders of machinery and weaponry for other shows. This time, we get to see them as the dark, scary, and evil corporation comic fans know they are. Expect them to be the primary antagonists of the series.
Back in the church, Tandy and Tyrone’s conversation has blown into an argument. After trying to test the limits of their powers by touching (and getting hurled to opposite ends of the building), the discussion turns towards the darkness they saw in each other via the voodoo cleans. Both attack each other for their upbringing. Tyrone speaks to her privilege as a young white woman. She mentions that she has to scam and con her way through life because she has nothing. Tyrone brilliantly retorts that she is able to scam and con people, because her white privilege gives her the benefit of the doubt in life, while he (even though middle-class black kid at a private school (which she scolds him for)), is treated as a thug and the whole country wants to kill him. The show is low-key woke for moments like this. They go their separate ways. Later on, Tandy tries to commit suicide by chaining her legs and tying ropes around her hands and jumping into the lake (he suicidal thoughts are what led to the argument with Tyrone), she then cuts the ropes free with her light daggers. She has now managed to control her powers. She then heads to Greg’s office and uses her light daggers to break open the safe (that the Roxxon assassin overlooked) and she now has all the files needed to continue investigating them.
Next week, Tandy and Tyrone start looking into Roxxon.
