Watch out, everybody, there’s a powerful new cinematic universe out there and it’s James Wan’s The Conjuring franchise. After a pair of successful horror movies and a third likely on the way, it’s now spawned the equally-lucrative Annabelle and Annabelle: Creation centered on the demon doll glimpsed in the first movie. There’s also a movie based on the Crooked Man seen in The Conjuring 2, and lastly there’s The Nun, which opens later this year directed by The Hallow‘s Corin Hardy.
The spooky first trailer has arrived and no, that isn’t Marilyn Manson it’s the titular demonic nun who caused such terror in The Conjuring 2. Penned by red-hot It and Annabelle writer Gary Dauberman, the film is a prequel set in 1950s Romania where the Vatican has sent a priest and novitiate to investigate the suspicious suicide of a nun at a monastery.
The film stars Demian Bichir and Taissa Farmiga, the latter joining the same cinematic universe as her older sister, Vera. The resemblance is uncanny and one can’t help but wonder if her casting was purposeful. I don’t know if they’re going to draw a straight line between Taissa’s Sister Irene character and Vera’s Lorraine Warren, but would anybody be surprised if they did?
Here’s the synopsis: “When a young nun at a cloistered abbey in Romania takes her own life, a priest with a haunted past and a novitiate on the threshold of her final vows 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.”
She survived World War I, but can Wonder Woman possibly have what it takes to take on the ’80s and come out alive? The tracksuits alone may do her in. Today, Patty Jenkins took to Twitter and revealed the first look at the Wonder Woman sequel, while also confirming its title to be Wonder Woman 1984. Not sure about that title but if anybody can make it work, it’s Jenkins.
The image features Chris Pine, in his tracksuit glory, as the returning from the dead Steve Trevor. How exactly is that possible? I have theories that don’t involve being frozen in ice (Captain America called dibs on that one), but I’m curious to see what Jenkins and newly-demoted co-writer Geoff Johns came up with. Maybe this Steve is a shapeshifter of some kind? A clone, perhaps? Maybe he crashed through a wormhole that transported him to the dawn of MTV?
Star Gal Gadot also tweeted out an image featuring Diana staring at a bank of era-appropriate TV monitors. You’re practically waiting for Max Headroom to show his face. There’s a good chance her scene takes place in the same shopping mall (Mall? What are those??) as the one Pine finds himself in. Maybe Diana took a job working security?
Sadly, no looks at Kristen Wiig as Cheetah but I think we’ll have to wait for Comic-Con for that.
With the current controversy over Chinese telecom ZTE I’m fairly certain China Salesman is little more than a propaganda piece disguised to infiltrate us through an American action flick. This flag-waving slice of mediocrity boasts a ridiculous plot in which warring Chinese and European telecom companies try to win a lucrative contract in a North African country when civil war erupts. The only one who can save the day? A humble, heroic I.T. engineer Yan Jian (Dongxue Li) who must not only avoid getting caught in the battlefield crossfire, but he must restore cell phone service to the country while also working hard to win the contract! Get that man a raise!
Sneaky, because a look at the poster and trailer feature past-their-prime action stars Mike Tyson and Steven Seagal, leading you to think this is a movie in which they are prominent forces. Well…nah. But for about three glorious minutes, all packed within the first 10 minutes of the movie, Tyson and Seagal give us the showdown we were anticipating. Sorta. Tyson plays Kabbah, a mercenary of dubious African accent who refuses to drink alcohol in the bar owned by former merc/black ops agent Lauder (Seagal), who takes offense. So Lauder has one of his goons offer Kabbah a glass of piss to drink instead, which starts a comically inept brawl between the two out of shape brawlers.
Director Tan Bing doesn’t have much to work with from a budget standpoint; the movie looks incredibly cheap from beginning to end, but Tyson and Seagal make matters worse. First of all there’s Seagal, who may have been wearing a tarp and has lost any credibility as a legit badass fighter. The quick, fluid palm strikes that defined his ’80s career are now so slow you’d think they were some kind of camera trick. Tyson is still pretty imposing when given the right material but his lack of motivation here is obvious. Perhaps it has something to do with him not really throwing blows at Seagal, but some lousy stunt double? The rumor is that both men wouldn’t even stage the fight unless it would end in draw that saves their fragile screen reputations. Ting used body doubles to get around this ridiculous demand, and employed some rapid fire editing so hide the fact that Tyson and Seagal never share the screen for a moment. It’s as ugly and amateurish as it sounds, with shots of both men swinging wildly at air.
If you only signed up for the main event fight between Tyson and Seagal, your best bet is to shut the movie off now. They continually reappear later, with Kabbah leading one murderous rebel faction tied to the Europeans and Lauder popping up to dispense unwanted words of wisdom, and in each case it becomes obvious how little time either actor spent on set. They always look like they just drove in from the hotel, which is probably accurate. You’ll find nothing but unintentional comedy from the pathetic matchbox special effects or the unpolished screenplay with nebulous stakes. Cell phone service goes out and an entire nation is thrown into chaos? Damn! Beasts of No Nation this ain’t! Action sequences seem to exist completely separate from one another, and occasionally end with Yan Jian literally waving the Chinese flag, apparently the international symbol of peace in whatever reality this movie exists in.
When the story diverts from Yan Jian’s straightline mission to fix the broken cell towers it somehow gets even more absurd. The overly earnest engineer finds himself captured by natives over a stupid misunderstanding that he kidnapped a local girl (???). It makes zero sense. Later the United Nations come swooping in with an attack helicopter, saving Yan Jian’s ass from certain doom. Moments later they land and immediately inform him they can’t get involved. Uhhhh, I guess all those missiles you just used to kill a bunch of rebels don’t count? Clearly there wasn’t a lot of time spent on the details of anything, other than pushing some weird Chinese agenda through phony-sounding speeches about freedom and telecommunications equality. No bullshit.
If you’ve managed to endure an hour you’ll be treated to what appears to be the movie’s natural conclusion. Yan Jian has accomplished his mission, mobile phones are active everywhere again, the threat is neutralized, and all should be right in the world. One look at the clock will tell you there’s still a good 45 minutes left, though, and if you sit through it the pain of a belabored plot worn thin is on your head. China Salesman tries to sell you on a lot of crap, but don’t let it sell you on it being worth a complete viewing. You’ll be getting the short end of that bargain for sure.
Last year a condensed, stripped-down version of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower hit theaters, and unsurprisingly it was pretty terrible. Not even Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey could save it, and the film earned just $113M worldwide. Think about how pathetically low that number is for an adaptation of such a popular series of novels. Since the beginning there has always been a TV series component attached that would broaden the scope of the franchise. Amazon was revealed to be the home for it, but there has been no confirmation by the network until now. Surprisingly, this thing might still become a reality.
New Amazon Studios chief Jennifer Salke talked about The Dark Tower series and said that it’s “very much alive”. She added that the time is coming for her to start checking out some of the scripts already written for it, presumably by the film’s director Nikolaj Arcel who wrote the pilot.
“Those are scripts that I haven’t gotten yet,” said Salke. “I’ll be seeing those, that material, in the coming weeks. None of those things are dead. They’re very much alive.”
Something tells me Arcel won’t have much say in the series anymore, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they scrap everything and pretend the movie never happened. The Walking Dead‘s Glen Mazzarra was named showrunner some time back but who knows if that will stick. The same goes for having Elba and McConaughey making occasional appearances. If the series acts as a reboot then we may see completely new casting take place. [Deadline]
Disney had a surprise for us this morning, releasing the first teaser trailer for Tim Burton’s live-action Dumbo. The anticipated remake was expected to be part of Disney’s CineEurope presentation today, but they decided to get out in front of it with an impressive piece of footage that shows off the special effects which may rival those of Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book.
Colin Farrell stars as Holt Farrier, a former circus showman who returns from the war a widower with two kids to take care of. But he’s still got the circus, and he’s hired by owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) to take care of Dumbo, a newborn elephant with gigantic ears that have made him a laughingstock. The teaser shows Holt and his kids’ first encounter with the elephant, hidden under a bale of hay. We also see images familiar to fans of the classic 1941 film, such as the pink elephant sequence and Dumbo’s first-time soaring under the big top. There’s also an updated version of the Oscar-nominated song “Baby Mine”.
Also starring Michael Keaton, Eva Green, Nico Parker, Finley Hobbins, and Alan Arkin, Dumbo opens March 29th 2019.
Marvel’s box office dominance over the last decade has made them a member of many exclusive clubs, but none quite as exclusive as the $2B club. Only Avatar, Titanic, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens could lay claim to being members as of a couple days ago, but now you can add Avengers: Infinity War.
As of right now Infinity War sits at $2.02B, good enough for 4th on the all-time list and the second-fastest to hit that number. It’s $66M shy of The Force Awakens and chances are it won’t have the staying power to reach that, especially since the domestic total has been sorta weak. While nobody at Marvel is going to complain about the $656M haul stateside, that’s a good $40M less than Black Panther earned. In other words, the vast bulk of Infinity War‘s numbers were from overseas, where it earned $1.35B.
I guess the question now is whether Avengers 4 can do even better? We’ll find out in May 2019!
The latest blockbuster adaption of the epic game series
stars Academy Award winner Alicia Vikander as Lara Croft, the fiercely
independent daughter of a legendary archeologist who went missing years ago. When
a clue to her father’s last mission, and perhaps final resting place, is
uncovered, Lara embarks an an epic journey across the world to find out the
truth about her father’s secret life as an adventurer.
We Said: “One downside to
this Tomb
Raider and the casting of Vikander is the lack of campy fun Jolie
brought to the role. Vikander’s incredibly serious throughout and the tone is
grim. This is a video game movie, shouldn’t it be both exhilarating and kind of
silly? They knew how to have fun with the ridiculous plot before but something
has been lost in the rebooted take. You’ll also be hard pressed to find any big
surprises either in the challenges Lara faces or the people she’s surrounded
by. ” Rating: 3 out of 5
A romantic comedy for our modern times, Love Simon follows the
titular teen with a big secret – none of his family or friends know he’s gay. Struggling
to fit in and accept his own identity, Simon’s life gets complicated further
with the arrival of an anonymous classmate he’s fallen for online. Resolving
both issues proves hilarious, terrifying and life-changing.
We Said: “I long for the day when a film such as Love,
Simon is seen as just a terrific movie and not a groundbreaking
cultural moment. We’re not there yet, but this is a damn good way to start.” Rating: 4 out of 5
The long awaited follow up to the cult classic 2008 slasher
film, Prey at Night follows a simple family vacation that quickly
descends into madness. Stuck at a mysteriously vacant mobile home park, Mike, Cindy
and their two teenage kids soon find themselves at the mercy of a trio of
masked intruders, who torment them to satisfy their sick thirst for blood.
We Said: “If there’s a star
of this film it’s [budding scream queen Bailee Madison], otherwise the praise
falls on [Johannes] Roberts’ direction and [Bryan] Bertino’s simple, effective
plotting that packs a lot of scares in just 80 minutes. Here’s hoping we don’t
have to wait another ten years for The Strangers to go hunting again.” Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Dreamworks’ Trolls was an unexpected pleasure, Justin Timberlake’s infectious and Oscar-nominated “Can’t Stop the Feeling” powering the film to $346M worldwide. It didn’t take long for a sequel to be announced with Timberlake, Anna Kendrick, and most of the voice cast returning. While it’s still a couple of years away, we now know film’s title will be Trolls World Tour, and there’s even a new synopsis:
Continuing where the first film left off, it’s all glitter and happiness in Troll Town until Queen Poppy and Branch make a surprising discovery — there are other Troll worlds beyond their own, each defined by a different genre of music. When a mysterious threat puts all the Trolls across the land in danger, Poppy, Branch, and their band of friends must embark on an epic quest through unfamiliar terrain to do the impossible: create harmony among the diverse Trolls to unite them against certain doom.
Mike Mitchell won’t be directing this one; instead it will be co-directors Walt Dohrn and David P. Smith who plan to increase the use of music. More original songs and re-creations of classic favorites will be “cleverly woven into the narrative of the film as story-telling elements. The all-new installment of the franchise expands the series’ music genres, representing a variety of songs from pop, country, and hip-hop, to hard rock, funk, K-pop and EDM – as well as everything in between.”
New additions to the cast include Sam Rockwell, Chance the Rapper, Anthony Ramos, Karan Soni, Flula Borg, and Jamie Dornan. They’ll be joining other returning voice stars James Corden (Biggie), Caroline Hjelt (Chenille), Aino Jawo (Satin), Ron Funches (Cooper), and Kunal Nayyar (Guy Diamond).
Trolls: World Tour opens February 14th 2020. The franchise is up for an Emmy this year with the 30-minute special Trolls Holiday.
If the words “Liquid Television” mean anything to you then you’re probably old enough to remember MTV’s Aeon Flux. It was a series of avant garde animated shorts for MTV’s Liquid Television brand by animator Peter Chung in 1991. The action-packed shorts were incredibly popular and more episodes were released a year later and again in 1995. Somehow that led to a terrible 2005 live-action movie directed by Karyn Kusama and starring Charlize Theron during Hollywood’s first attempt to turn her into an action star. Now the series is making a comeback, thankfully on the small screen where it belongs.
MTV has ordered up a live-action Aeon Flux series, making this the first time it’s been done in that format. The Walking Dead‘s Gale Anne Hurd will exec-produce, having also produced the 2005 film, while Teen Wolf showrunner Jeff Davis will write the script. The original series of shorts were set in the future and followed a followed a young anarchist assassin as he attempted to infiltrate a neighboring police state to kill its leader. The episodes tended to end with Aeon Flux being killed in some odd fashion. What I remember most is the weird intro that always freaked me out. Bugs, man. Can’t mess with ’em.
Here’s the synopsis for the new series, and it isn’t terribly different: The live-action series is set in a future dystopian state and revolves around a young assassin who teams with a group of biohacking rebels to save humanity as she becomes the hero known as Aeon Flux.
Aeon Flux teased a rich mythology that we never got to see explored, so here’s hoping Jeff Davis can make it happen.
The trailer for Queen biopic Bohemian Rhapsody was eagerly awaited by fans of Freddie Mercury and the legendary band, but also by those curious to see how the film looked after Bryan Singer was fired as director. The response was largely positive, but one thing that was clearly missing was any mention of who directed it. You saw neither Singer’s name or Dexter Fletcher, who stepped in to complete the final two weeks of shooting.
Was there some reason for the omission? Had to be, and now we know from the latest issue of Empire that it will be Singer who gets the directing credit, not Fletcher. Here’s what producer Graham King had to say…
“Bryan Singer is the credited director of the film. Basically, Bryan had some personal issues going on. He wanted to hiatus the movie to deal with them, and the movie had to get finished. That was what it came down to… It wasn’t about reinventing the wheel. We needed someone who would have some creative freedom, but work inside a box. [Fletcher] did us a real favor.”
This is surprising only because Singer’s name has become so toxic that you’d think 20th Century Fox would want to keep it far away. Singer has been dogged by sexual misconduct allegations in the past, and his dismissal was right around the time of the Harvey Weinstein situation. On the other hand, Fletcher, who was attached to a prior version of the film before Singer came aboard, has said he didn’t do this for the credit. He only wanted to see the movie finished. Well, he got his wish. The movie’s done and he ain’t getting any credit. King said Fletcher did about 16 days of shooting, with Singer completing the bulk of it. The latter deserves credit, and this is a way for Fox to avoid an unnecessary fight with the DGA over it.
Bohemian Rhapsody stars Rami Malek and opens November 2nd. [via Collider]
