It’s a Slither reunion! Elizabeth Banks was a star of James Gunn’s horror 13 years ago (!!!), and now the two are reunited on another horror project from the Guardians of the Galaxy director. Banks will star in an untitled horror film that Gunn will produce alongside The H Collective.
The film will be directed by David Yarovesky (The Hive) from a script by Mark and Brian Gunn. While we have no details on the plot we do have James Gunn’s statement on working with Banks again. Hint, he’s pretty excited:
“Elizabeth and I have been on the same artistic page since we first met when she auditioned for Slither back in 2005. She’s since remained one of my best friends in the world, and I’ve been fighting tooth and nail to work with her again. She’s the perfect partner to Yarvo, the H Collective and myself in creating this very special project.”
Next up, signing Banks to play Moondragon in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, right? RIGHT!?
I don’t have a lot of complaints with Star Wars: The Last Jedi, but if there’s one it’s the treatment of Gwendoline Christie’s Captain Phasma. The chrome-plated trooper has done nothing but look cool and get her butt kicked in the brief appearances she’s made, ending with her apparent demise in Rian Johnson’s film. But it could have gone so much differently, at least if the newly-revealed deleted scene had ever made the cut. Check it out below, it starts at about 1:30.
That’s so much better than the scene we got. In this one, Phasma and Finn have more of a verbal back-and-forth, in which he’s quick to let everyone know it was her who dropped the shields on Starkiller Base, leading to its destruction. Of course, she’s not stupid and doesn’t give her men the chance to turn on her. After she dispatches of them she nearly does the same to Finn, but he gets the upper hand and blows her away. Her fate is considerably more up in the air, too, and would have left open the possibility of a return in Episode 9.
Hopefully Phasma gets one more shot to remove herself from the doghouse that currently occupies other cool but pointless characters like Darth Maul and Boba Fett.
Michael Bay may be done with the world of Transformers, but if you think he’s done with robots in apocalyptic scenarios then you’d be wrong. Bay has signed up for two movies, including Robopocalypse, which his Transformers exec-producer Steven Spielberg once had planned for himself.
First up, Bay will direct action flick 6 Underground, which features a script by Deadpool writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick. There aren’t a lot of details right now but Justin Kroll says his source says it’s “The Rock meets Suicide Squad“. Okay, that sounds like something Bay would take a swing at.
Next is Robopocalypse, which Spielberg was planning to direct himself back in 2013 with Chris Hemsworth, Ben Whishaw, and Anne Hathaway attached to star. It’s based on Daniel H. Wilson’s book about a war between man and machine. Spielberg was never able to get the script where he wanted it to be, so he moved on to The BFG, Bridge of Spies, and other projects.
I don’t know what this means for that Lobo movie Bay was circling for Warner Bros. Maybe it still happens somewhere down the line. It’s not like DC Films is in the right position for that movie just now, anyway. I think it’s more likely they will look in a different direction than wait for Bay’s slate to clear up. [Variety]
Walking through the icy streets of Park City during Sundance you’re liable to run into anybody. Well, this year you might have accidentally bumped into Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was on hand to help promote RBG, the new documentary her history-making life and career.
Magnolia Pictures has debuted the first trailer for the documentary, which features appearances by other feminist icons such as Gloria Steinem and Nina Totenberg. The film shines a light on Ginsburg’s amazing life, her sharp legal mind, marriage, and unexpected pop culture fame as the “Notorious RBG”. She’s so popular nobody ever wants to see her retire, although that might have more to do with the guy who would be naming her replacement. Here’s the synopsis:
At the age of 84, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has developed a breathtaking legal legacy while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. But without a definitive Ginsburg biography, the unique personal journey of this diminutive, quiet warrior’s rise to the nation’s highest court has been largely unknown, even to some of her biggest fans – until now. RBG is a revelatory documentary exploring Ginsburg ‘s exceptional life and career from Betsy West and Julie Cohen, and co-produced by Storyville Films and CNN Films.
Directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, RBG opens May 4th in select theaters. That’s right, this is the movie that really ran off Avengers: Infinity War.
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free early screening of Tomb Raider, starring Alicia Vikander as treasure-seeking heroine Lara Croft.
SYNOPSIS: Lara Croft (Alicia Vikander) is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished when she was scarcely a teen. Now a young woman of 21 without any real focus or purpose, Lara navigates the chaotic streets of trendy East London as a bike courier, barely making the rent. Determined to forge her own path, she refuses to take the reins of her father’s global empire just as staunchly as she rejects the idea that he’s truly gone. Advised to face the facts and move forward after seven years without him, even Lara can’t understand what drives her to finally solve the puzzle of his mysterious death. Leaving everything she knows behind, Lara goes in search of her dad’s last-known destination: a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan. But her mission will not be an easy one; just reaching the island will be extremely treacherous. Suddenly, the stakes couldn’t be higher for Lara, who—against the odds and armed with only her sharp mind, blind faith and inherently stubborn spirit—must learn to push herself beyond her limits as she journeys into the unknown. If she survives this perilous adventure, it could be the making of her, earning her the name tomb raider.
The screening takes place on Tuesday, March 13th at 7:00pm at AMC Mazza Gallerie. For a chance to win, simply complete the Rafflecopter contest form below. Winners will be selected on Friday, March 9th and notified by email. Good luck!
After what I would call a schizophrenic marketing campaign for Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One, Warner Bros. has decided to just fall back on nostalgia as the strategy going forward. A wave of new posters for the film have been released, each one paying homage to a different classic movie. And no, they aren’t all Spielberg flicks, because that would be awkward.
Through some terrible Photoshop we get callbacks to The Breakfast Club, Bullitt, The Matrix, The Goonies, Risky Business, and more. I don’t get why they put the character avatars into the images and not the recognizable stars such as Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cooke, and Ben Mendelsohn, but I think that speaks to how confused promoting this has been. Certainly, the movie is at least in part a love letter to the 1980s but that is not enough to build an entire movie’s marketing plan on, or indeed an entire movie. So we’ve seen it also positioned as a sci-fi action movie and a tribute to Spielberg himself.
My gut tells me Ready Player One will stumble out of the gate the same way Ender’s Game did a few years ago. It’s a beloved book for a certain group of people who will flock to the movie, but any appeal to others will be minimal. We’ll find out when Ready Player One opens March 29th.
“We’re really, really in the weeds on trying to finish the movie right now. I love it, but I don’t know how it’s going to be received. I feel something very deep in my gut when Oprah’s voice says, ‘There’s a darkness in the world, and the only one who can stop it is…’ smash cut to a black girl. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know if people are going to feel like that.”
A Wrinkle in Time is a cherished childhood classic, and Ava DuVernay, the first black female director ever to helm a $100M movie, was always going to have an uphill battle adapting it. The story, penned by author Madeleine L’Engle in 1962 and co-adapted by Frozen writer Jennifer Lee, is sprawling, challenging, and imaginative, taking three kids across time and space for an epic battle against evil. But DuVernay was right to be a little concerned, expressed in the above quote. It’s not that audiences will balk at the idea of a smart black girl saving the goodness in all of humanity (Okay, there might be a few of those.), it’s that the film, for all of its wondrous visuals and good intentions, never takes off and soars the way we keep hoping it will.
A noble effort with few moments of true magic, A Wrinkle in Time follows in the unfortunate wake of Black Panther, with audience expectation at an all-time high, especially for another film with an intelligent, powerful African-American protagonist. So much that is right with this film is encapsulated in the opening scene, in which Meg Murry (Storm Reid), a young interracial girl, is introduced to the wonders of science by her father (Chris Pine), a physicist obsessed with the idea of space/time travel. Together with Meg’s scientist mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), they also introduce her to her younger brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe), a savant and potentially the most intelligent member of the family. But shortly thereafter, Meg’s father vanishes into thin air, and four years have gone by with no word from him. His disappearance has turned Meg from a promising, active student into a sullen loner, prone to being bullied but also quick to temper.
Meg has the rug pulled out from under her with the arrival of three celestial beings and the movie’s poster stars, Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey), Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), and Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling). They tell her that her father’s scientific theory of a tesseract is real, and that he’s missing somewhere across time and space. The only one who has the strength to save him is Meg, along with her Charles Wallace because he’s so smart, and Meg’s friend/crush Calvin (Pan‘s Levi Miller), because he’s “good at diplomacy” although I suspect it’s because his eyes are so blue and Meg needs a love interest. Diplomacy doesn’t really come into it.
Considered unfilmmable for decades, A Wrinkle in Time encompasses numerous themes that are tough for a story geared towards kids. L’Engle, a devout Christian, wrote the book as a religious allegory that concerns the fight against evil during the existence of a powerful but impassive God. Unsurprisingly, DuVernay has a more grounded focus, like those of a mixed-race girl who feels abandoned by her father and shunned for being different. The film works best when focused on her, and the internal battle she must wage to overcome her hesitation and be the warrior the universe, and her father, need.
Sadly, that journey is overshadowed when Meg, Charles Wallace, and Calvin are whisked, or “tessered” away to parts unknown. The adventure that follows is never as harrowing as it needs to be. Worse, most of their encounters are plainly disappointing and don’t amount to much of an obstacle at all. The kids are charged with defeating the IT, a thing of pure evil that has begun to infect everyone in the universe, with human heroes that have been fighting against it for centuries. The worst it can conjure up to stop Meg is a suburban neighborhood populated by Stepford families, and a red-eyed Michael Pena as the IT’s vaudevillian mouthpiece.
Our screening opened with a plea by Duvernay for us to tap into our childlike selves and just enjoy the movie. It’s the kind of begging you generally get before a movie underwhelms, showing a lack of confidence in the audience to like it on their own terms. Sure enough it wasn’t long after our screening that I heard the first “It wasn’t made for you!” excuse in an effort to explain away the disappointment. But Duvernay does occasionally hit on the eye-opening childlike awe that A Wrinkle in Time should be bursting with. A scene where Mrs. Whatsit transforms into a dragon-like creature and soars through the air with the kids on her back is just such a breath-taking moment. Unfortunately it was then followed by a surprisingly tame appearance by Zach Galifianakis as the goofball Happy Medium.
He’s not the only one who feels out of place. Oprah Winfrey as the looming, towering Mrs. Which is more of a comical eyesore than a being of untold power. She doesn’t actually do much but hang over each scene while Witherspoon and Kaling have all of the fun. At least they had plenty of colorful outfits to change in and out of with a twirl. A dazzling array of colors fill the screen and some of the landscapes are astonishingly beautiful, but you keep wishing there were more exotic interplanetary locales for them to visit. You keep wishing there were more characters for them to encounter other than the three celestials. You keep wishing this Wrinkle in Time felt bigger and not so folded in on itself.
The blame mostly rests at DuVernay’s feet. An accomplished filmmaker who will undoubtedly survive this mishap, DuVernay doesn’t seem at all comfortable with a movie of this scope. An excess of extreme close-ups and quick edits make for a disjointed and sloppy effort, particularly noticeable in the final “battle” (It’s more like an argument) against the IT.
Clocking in at under two hours, A Wrinkle in Time has a strong lead performance by Storm Reid and enough vibrant costumed characters to keep younger aged moviegoers interested. But even with the lavish budget, visual effects, and A-list stars it only just manages to best its less flashy 2003 made-for-TV predecessor.
Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight has set the bar for superhero movies, earning an incredible eight Oscar nominations and winning two. No other film, whether it be from Marvel or DC, has come close and none have been nominated for Best Picture. But could Black Panther be the movie that changes everything? It turns out Nolan is someone who thinks that it might.
According to Deadline who caught up with the Dunkirk director at the Governors Ball recently, Nolan said that he thinks Black Panther will be nominated for Best Picture next year. They don’t have any direct quotes, but I’m sure someone will be following up on this the next time he does an interview. Not only that, but a top Disney exec reportedly told the site that Black Panther will have a big Best Picture campaign, joined by the upcoming sequel Mary Poppins Returns.
If Black Panther does get a Best Picture nomination it would be a game changer for the genre. A lot of people were hoping Wonder Woman would shatter that particular glass ceiling but it wasn’t to be. Now let’s just hope that ceiling isn’t actually made of vibranium.
Admittedly, this isn’t the funniest of Screen Junkies’ Honest Trailers. And the reason for it is simple: Thor: Ragnarok is pretty damned great. There are a couple of swipes here and there but most of the complaints are about how bad the franchise was before Taika Waititi lightened things up.
This is still worth watching for one reason, though. The best insult of all is saved for the DCEU. That’s right, DC Films can’t escape getting hammered even in something like this. You’ll have to wait for the end of the video for it, but it’s well worth it.
Thor: Ragnarok is available on Blu-Ray, DVD, and digital right now.
Last week The Flash returned and continued Barry’s season-long arc facing off against DeVoe, now in the body of country singer metahuman Izzay. Every step, DeVoe has been one step of Barry, thanks to his superhuman intelligence. Last week wasn’t all doom and gloom, as Barry was able to learn that DeVoe’s teleportations come from another dimension, meaning that he has a secret lair that Cisco and Caitlin may be able to use their science skills to discover and perhaps Barry may have the upper hand against.
This week, we get a break from Barry vs DeVoe as we instead have a bottleneck episode where Barry has to save the city in a very unique way. The entire episode takes place in a matter of seconds, but thanks to this being the world of superspeed, a whole lot happens as we are introduced to “Flashtime” (thanks, Cisco, clever with the names as usual).
The episode begins with Barry continuing his practicing on how to race against the closing of one of Cisco’s breaches. Barry as always, has to get faster to overcome the odds. If Cisco and Caitlin are able to discover where DeVoe’s secret other dimensional lair is, then he has to be real quick to run into the portal to then face off against his adversary. However, Barry is not having much luck. Iris being his loving wife recommends that he take a break and the two spend some quality time together as husband and wife so he can take his mind off DeVoe and their troubles. Jessie Quick, who we haven’t seen for quite some time, comes from Earth-2 to talk with Harry and help some of their daddy/daughter issues that have been popping up as of late. While all this is going on, Team Flash is called into action for a regular crime.
Joe and the Central City police department are facing off against a group of armed terrorists who have come to an ARGIS facility. Taking heavy fire, he calls in Team Flash for an assist. While Barry, Cisco, and Killer Frost are able to take on most of the bad guys, the lead terrorist gets the drop on them and is able to press the button on a nuclear bomb. Here is where the rest of the episode gets mighty interesting. We finally get to see the world as Barry sees it when he uses the Speed Force. Cisco coins it “Flash Time,” where the rest of the world looks like it’s at a standstill because Barry is moving so fast. Because Jessie is a speedster, she is also able to operate in Flash Time and she and Barry now have to figure out a way to stop the bomb from exploding.
They try a bunch of options. After recruiting Earth-3’s Jay Garrick, the try all sorts of ways to stop the bomb from going off and destroying Central City. They cannot use their speed to get the bomb out of the city, cause the sheer force of their powers will cause the bomb to explode Flash Time or not. Barry then touches Cisco, bringing him into Flash Time where he hopes that Cisco can use his Vibe powers to breach the bomb into another unpopulated Earth. However, in Flash Time, Cisco’s powers do not work as he’s not a speedster. The same goes for Killer Frost when Barry tries to get her to cool down the bomb after bringing her into Flash Time. The next person Barry tries to lean on his Harry, who says to have the bomb blow up in the Speed Force. However, Harry’s unsure what will happen to the Speed Force, and ay Garrick states that it will destroy is, and negate the powers of any speedster throughout the multiverse. The three speedsters try to throw lightning to stop the explosion. However, Jay Garrick is getting too old of this $h*t and cannot keep up as he cannot throw a lightning bolt. The three speedsters are getting tired for exerting themselves in Flash Time. Soon enough, Jay leaves Flash Time, and then Jessie does to be with her father.
Barry’s frustrated as it seems as though there’s nothing he can do to fix this. He goes to STAR Labs to spend his last few moments with Iris. In Flash Time, he tells her that he’s failed and he loves her, calling her his “lightning.” Iris, ever the level-headed leader of the team realizes that there’s a way to save the day. To save Barry, Team Flash used a device fused with his DNA to convince the Speed Force that he was still in it. Barry can simply run into the Speed Force, get the device, and throw it at the nuclear explosion and the energy from the Speed Force will negate the explosion. As Barry does this, the bomb is stopped and the day is saved.
The episode ends with Harry and Jessie making amends over his coldness over the death of his wife (her mother) by using a device that allows her to read his thoughts. The two are able to reconcile as she heads back to Earth-2. Jay Garrick heads to Earth-3 where he reveals that he’s going to retire being a speedster, but not before training a new speedster to be The Flash on his earth. He tells them that the new mystery speedster is a woman, but he doesn’t reveal who that person in. Later in Jitters, Harry and Caitlin enjoy a cup of coffee, and they run into the mystery woman from Barry and Iris wedding (who I still think he their daughter from the future) who planned to bump into them. Who she officially is, will have to wait for another day.
Next week, Iris manages to get Barry’s Speed Force powers, as is the new Flash!
