Author Patricia Highsmith is known for her psychological thriller novels featuring charming murderers, the most popular of which features the character Tom Ripley, adapted for the screen many times. A couple of years ago, we learned that Helen Mirren would play Highsmith in a film titled Switzerland, from director Anton Corbijn. Retitled A Talent for Murder, the first trailer has now arrived courtesy of Bleecker Street.
A Talent for Murder puts Highsmith in the middle of her own psychological thriller, in which she is approached at her secluded Swiss home by a literary agent played by Alden Ehrenreich. He hopes to entice the reclusive author to write one more Ripley novel, only for their encounters to become more sinister.
The film is based on Joanna Murray-Smith’s 2014 play, Switzerland, which she adapted herself. Also in the cast are House of the Dragon‘s Olivia Cooke, and Juliet Stevenson.
Shockingly, this is Corbijn’s first feature in over a decade. He last directed the Robert Pattinson/Dane DeHaan James Dean drama, Life. He’s known mostly for the incredible Joy Division biopic, Control, as well as the John Le Carre thriller A Most Wanted Man, and George Clooney crime drama The American.
A Talent for Murder hits theaters on October 23rd, but will have its world premiere at TIFF next month.
After confirming Christian Bale and Leonardo DiCaprio for Heat 2, Michael Mann is starting to move on to the key female roles. Deadline reports Odessa Young will play young Charlene Shiherlis in the anticipated sequel, taking over the part famously played by Ashley Judd. This follows news that Obsession breakout Inde Navarrette had passed on the role. The report states that Navarrette had actually auditioned for the role of Gabi, but that is instead going to Mann’s first choice, newcomer Maria Cid.
Heat 2 is based on Mann and Meg Gardiner’s novel, taking place across two time periods, acting as a prequel and sequel to the 1995 film with young versions of the characters played by Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and Val Kilmer. In the first period, Chris Shiherlis tries to escape the LAPD after a robbery gone wrong, making his way to Southern Asia. The other time period is in 1988 Chicago, as Neil McCauley, Chris Shiherlis, and their crew nearly encounter Detective Hannah as he pursues a violent gang of home invaders.
Gabi is a new character to the franchise, and the daughter of McCauley’s girlfriend.
Young is best known for her roles in Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere, Assassination Nation, and the Netflix series, Black Rabbit. I interviewed her a few years ago for the literary drama, Shirley.
Adam Driver, Stephen Graham, and Jason Clarke are also in the cast, with more roles still to be filled.
On this episode of Cinema Royale, Joblo.com’s Chris Bumbray is back and we’re talking Ridley Scott’s post-apocalyptic THE DOG STARS with Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin, Margaret Qualley, Guy Pearce, and Allison Janney! How long before we get a Director’s Cut of this one?
A story set in the aftermath of global destruction. In this case, it’s not war but a lethal pandemic that has swept most of humanity off the globe. A few stragglers survive, including Elordi’s Hig, a pilot who has a single-engine Cessna he calls The Beast, a loyal blue heeler mutt named Jasper … and not much else. The dog and the plane are Hig’s version of singing “Old McDonald”—small comforts to keep him going when all seems lost.
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South Korean filmmaker Yeon Sang-ho directed two of the most influential zombie action flicks with Train to Busan and its massive sequel, Peninsula. He returns to the genre with another critically acclaimed horror-thriller, Colony, which plays a lot like Zack Snyder’s Dawn of the Dead, only much larger and with more of a brain (Mmmmm brains!) behind it. Premiering earlier this year at Cannes, the film is further proof that Sang-ho is among the best at bringing artistry to zombie chaos, even if it’s not quite on the level as his best work.
The premise of Colony is pretty simple. A seemingly ordinary biotech conference touting new advances in communication becomes ground zero for mayhem when disgruntled scientist Seo Young-cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) unleashes a virus into the building that transforms its victims into raging, uncontrollable zombies connected to a hive mind. The psychotic Seo has injected himself with the only vaccine, meaning they can’t just outright kill him for what he’s done. The infected are therefore seen as victims who can possibly be cured, hamstringing police as they try to stop the violence. The authorities also have to deal with the possibility that Seo has something even more sinister up his sleeve.
Typical of the genre, Colony follows a group of survivors from different backsground as they try not to die or become infected themselves. The film largely takes place inside of a sprawling office space, allowing for longer, more elaborate action sequences. And since these zombies run around freely and attack like wild savages, the pacing is brisk and keeps you on your toes. Sang-ho employed contortionists to literally twist themselves into knots capturing the infected’s freakish mobility.
There’s a diverse array of characters, with some getting more attention than others. Former biotech professor Kwon Se-jeong (Gianna Jun) attended the conference because her ex-husband, a real sweetheart, dragged her there to help her get a new job. Security guard Choi Hyun-seok (Ji Chang-wook) is the best equipped to survive this apocalyptic madness, but must also look out for his paraplegic sister Choi (Kim Shin-rok) who is trapped there with no way to get around on her own. There are many other familiar archetypes: arrogant rich dude, an altruistic older man looked down on for his age, a bullied teen and her tormentors, as well. One of those bullies is a whiner who is always a risk to get the others killed.
The title Colony is a bit ironic. The infected, who are seemingly unhinged and uncontrollable, operate with a singular purpose given to them by the hive mind, the origins of which are unclear. They act in contrast to the survivors, who are fully capable of rational thought and problem solving. However, its this freedom of thought that causes them to act at cross purposes, disrupting the unit as they begin looking out for themselves.
As the survivors’ clique crumbles, Colony actually grows in suspense because new layers are added to the conflict. A tragic death causes a ripple within the group that ultimately plays out as a quest for vengeance, complicating the remaining survivors’ hopes of getting out alive. Another factor hindering any chance of containing the virus the inherent mysogeny of the men in charge, who are more than willing to assign blame to the female experts when things go wrong, and to ignore them when the data conflicts with what is politically expedient.
Clocking in at around two hours, Colony doesn’t quite have the steam to keep operating at such an intense level. Sang-ho’s screenplay leans into modern fears of artificial intelligence and global pendemics, but with only a couple of exceptions its characters lack the depth seen in his previous films. Still, Colony is a breathless experience and another successful zombie epic for Sang-ho, who keeps finding ways to tick this well-worn genre to new places.
When a moviegoer fainted at the Fantastia premiere of Mia’Kate Russell’s Ozploitation flick Penny Lane is Dead, you just knew that kind of instant cred would put it on genre fans’ radars. Russell, whose career began in the trenches of the Australian makeup and special effects scene, makes her feature directing debut with a vicious, energetic revenge thriller and queer love story, boasting wild over-the-top performances and nasty acts of violence. The cruelty shown by women towards other women for petty grievances and simple jealousy is put on full display in a film that won’t be easy to shake.
Set in 1986, Penny Lane is Dead follows a trio of girlfriends, tough-as-nails Toni (Tahlee Fereday), childlike Amy (Alexandra Jensen), and the titular Penny Lane (Bailey Spalding), partying together at a beach house near the end of summer. Penny, a gorgeous blond who turns the heads of every guy she meets, has plans to leave town to study law, and she wants her newly-minted girlfriend, Toni, to join her. It’s a new thing, this romance they share, and they haven’t even had a chance to tell Amy yet, although one assumes she’d be cool with it.
However, their plans for a fun night together get disrupted with the arrival of Kat, played by Ben Mendelsohn’s daughter, Sophia Wright-Mendelsohn. Kat wasn’t supposed to show up. She’s kind of like their worst frenemy, and there’s a reason they haven’t hung out with her in ages. Kat has always been jealous of Penny, and now, with the girls facing a future without her, she’s decided now is the time to ruin their lives. She arrives with a welcome gift, a plateful of drugged cupcakes, and when Penny gets sick and passed out, Kat invites in her sketchy ex-con boyfriend, Angus (Ben O’Toole) and his gang of thugs.
Penny Lane is Dead is a revenge movie on two fronts. Kat is looking to get even against the girls who left her behind, and what greater indignity is there then inviting in all of these skeevy guys who probably have never heard of consent and wouldn’t care if they did. Angus is the worst of them all. This guy is so unhinged even his sidekicks are terrified of what he might do. With hair that suggests he’s a fan of Kiefer Sutherland’s David from The Lost Boys, he commits all manner of disturbing acts against the three women while Kat laughs maniacally behind him. Like most Ozploitation, which bears many of the same boundary-breaking traits as American exploitation flicks, a lot of what happens is extremely triggering and won’t be for the faint of heart. For me, it was tough to watch as Angus stalks the innocent Amy like a wild animal hunts a baby rabbit.
As terrible as Angus is, I haven’t hated a villain in a long time as much as I hated Kat. Wright-Mendelsohn takes her place as one of the great horror baddies in the role, as Kat is just utterly despicable through and through. She betrays not only her former friends, but women as a whole, catering to Angus’ every disgusting whim in hopes of gaining his approval, or just some of his attention. Russell cleverly offers the chance for us to sympathize with Kat for the abuses she endures, but then she does something so horrific that you just can’t ever forgive her, and that’s when she’ll need to get what’s coming to her.
Utilizing her background in makeup and special effects, Penny Lane is Dead deploys expert, practical displays of gore. The violence is off the chain, and when deaths do occur, they hit very hard. This is one of those movies where characters you expect to survive are shockingly shuffled off the mortal coil. The spilling of blood keeps ratcheting up, exploding every time Kat and Toni slice one another open with harsh words or sharp edges.
Penny Lane is Dead was an absolute blast. While I could quibble with it being pretty familiar to fans of the genre (which I am), and not straining to be more ambitious, I won’t do that because it’s so much damn fun. My only gripe is not being able to watch it at midnight with a packed crowd of eager, bloodthirsty fans, because that’s how this movie was meant to be seen.
Remember that sicko viral video Too Many Cooks, a violent 11-minute send-up of classic sitcoms that saw characters fall prey to a serial killer? That was Casper Kelly, and he’s turned that twisted mindset in a slightly different direction with Buddy, which poses the question, “What if Barney was a murderous slasher rather than a lovable, hugable friend”? It’s a film that will delight most Midnight audiences and stoners will dig it, but it’s also hard to escape that parodies of Barney feel so yesterday.
The opening bit is the best, with Buddy taking place in a 1999 kids’ TV show that’s like Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, and Romper Room mated. The plush, pastel-colored world isfull of talking couches, clocks, a mailbox, a backpack named Strappy, stock human characters with jobs as personalities (mailman, nurse, etc.), and, of course, big furry animal friends. Buddy is a big orange unicorn, and he loves to teach the kids right from wrong, offering them plenty of hugs along the way. Each episode ends with him doing such to all four children in the cast, singing songs as the credits roll.
However, something is off. Buddy is holding a dance party, and one boy, Josh, doesn’t feel up to the festivities. Buddy, for some reason, can’t handle this rejection and keeps pushing it. “I hate you”, Josh says. It’s like something breaks inside of Buddy, and soon, Josh’s bloody book is found inside of the exuberant trash can. When the next episode starts, Josh is gone and replaced by a new kid, Hannah, while Buddy insists the boy is okay. The other children know that ain’t right, but every attempt to get help from an adult ends in more murders. Before long, Buddy is coming after the other kids, too. Their only hope is to escape to Diamond City, an Oz-like land where they can finally be free of Buddy’s killer rampage.
Kelly is smart enough to know that this absurdist premise is overwhelming, and so the film takes a detour, away from the rainbow-colored world of kiddie TV and into reality. Cristin Milioti plays Grace, who, out of nowhere, lets out a primal scream at the dinner table, complaining of icy cold void from one of the empty chairs. She also begins seeing flashes of Buddy, and remembering events that her two kids don’t recall and her husband (Topher Grace) think sound crazy.
Buddy works the further into the wild unknown that it goes, and Kelly’s willingness to put the kids through some truly horrible trauma. There’s no shying away from the violence being done to the children, or the violence that they must do to survive. But there’s also plenty of adult humor that they get into, which most movies would be relucant. The grounded reality aspect fails to match the earlier energy, and doesn’t make enough good use of Milioti. She’s better later on, the closer she gets to Buddy’s deranged orbit.
Carrying most of the acting load is young Delaney Quinn as Freddy, who agonizes over seeing her best friend Buddy become a twisted monster out to slaughter her and the others. Like her friend Wade (Caleb “CJ” Williams), they see right through Buddy. Perhaps they’ve grown too old for kiddie games, and maybe that’s what Buddy is all about, learning to put such childish things in the past. But the past isn’t an easy thing to shake, and holds onto us with a death-like grip.
Keegan-Michael Key’s dopey/sinister vocals as Buddy are hilarious, as are voice cameos by Michael Shannon and Patton Oswalt. But it’s hard to shake that Buddy feels like a movie that’s arriving a few years too late, like a rerun on a forgotten network. What would’ve been subversive and transgressive then are merely good for a few laughs now.
Buddy opens in theaters on August 28th.
*NOTE: This review was originally part of my Sundance Film Festival coverage.*
Following acclaimed, transformative performances in A Different Man and The Apprentice, Sebastian Stan might be headed for more accolades. NEON has released the trailer for Cristian Mungiu’s Palme d’Or-winning drama, Fjord, which earned praise for the performances by Stan and Sentimental Value‘s Renate Reinsve, the second film they’ve starred in together.
In Fjord, Stan and Reinsve play a conservative couple who move to a progressive, coastal town, only to face extreme scrutiny and judgment for their beliefs. The film is based on true events surrounding the Bodnariu family, whose children were forcibly taken from them by Norwegian authorities.
Mungiu last won the Palme d’Or for 2007’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days.
Sporting a shaved head and salt-and-pepper beard with spectacles, it’s another role in which Stan is virtually unrecognizable. The film did allow him to return to his roots, playing the family’s devout Romanian patriarch.
NEON will release Fjord in theaters on October 9th.
It’s been eight years since Lee Chang-dong made a splash at Cannes with Burning, winning the FIPRESCI International Critics’ Prize. The South Korean filmmaker is poised to have a similar impact in Venice for the world premiere of his latest drama, Possible Love.
Starring Jeon Do-yeon, Sul Kyung-gu, Zo In-sung, and Cho Yeo-jeong, Possible Love centers on two married couples whose lives intersect during the making of a documentary.
Chang-dong directs from a script co-written with Oh Jung-mi. Here’s the official synopsis from Netflix, which will release the film in theaters on October 26th before streaming on November 6th.
Possible Love follows the intertwined relationship of two married couples facing different paths and hidden desires. Mi-ok (Jeon Do-yeon) lives quietly with her laid-off husband Ho-seok (Sul Kyung-gu) and their young son Cheol until a funeral brings them into the orbit of Ye-ji (Cho Yeo-jeong), a documentary filmmaker chronicling laid-off workers, and her husband Sang-woo (Zo In-sung) — a couple whose affluent lifestyle stands in sharp contrast to their own. When Mi-ok agrees to be filmed, she grows close to Ye-ji, and finds herself uneasily drawn to the unreadable Sang-woo. As their worlds collide, fractures begin to appear in their daily existence.
Following the Venice premiere, Possible Love will head to Toronto, which is where I hope to catch up with it. Stay tuned.
Just Play Dead is the product of work by two respected industry veterans: Casino Royale director Martin Campbell, and Passenger 57 writer Dan Gordon. Unfortunately, these two experienced journeymen are stuck in a bygone era with this lame crime caper, a throwback to the post-Pulp Fiction era when everyone was trying to ape Quentin Tarantino’s style in whatever Elmore Leonard adaptation they could get a green light. Even with Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Green fronting this unfunny tale of criminal shenanigans in the Canary Islands, this film is probably best seen as a luxurious paid vacation for all involved.
Jackson, a Tarantino vet coasting along in this one, plays Jack Wolfe, a wealthy criminal who doesn’t mind turning his associates into shark food when they are no longer needed. He’s been hiding out in the Canary Islands, but when one of those associates lets slip that Jack’s riches were gained illegally, he comes up with a scheme to fake his own death and collect the $30M insurance payout. Eva Green plays his adulterous wife, Nora, and to her the idea of Jack going to jail sounds pretty great. A former sex worker who has learned how to use her sexuality to twist men into knots, she’d love to have all of that money to herself so she can sleep around with others freely.
There’s just one problem: Jack named Nora the majority owner in his estate, tying her to his crimes. Not only that, but since they are married, she can’t testify against him anyway. So the two cook up a scheme to fake Jack’s death, split the money, and then he promises to let her walk away from the marriage to live her life.
The funny thing is, Nora had already begun plotting Jack’s demise by seducing two equally gullible dudes. Dani (Eoin Macken) is a do-gooder cop who has fallen head over heels for her. As a backup plan, she also ropes in Chad (Jason Fernández), a youthful dope who never really stood a chance against her.
If only these were the only characters thrown into this convoluted blender, but there are more, like Dani’s partner who warns him about Nora; Jack’s aging hatchet man who literally knows where the bodies are buried; and a former cop-turned-nun who can still sniff out a mystery.
On paper, Just Play Dead should still be a lot of fun. You’ve got a gorgeous locale that Campbell and DP Giles Nuttgens maximize for all its tropical glory, and a cast of crazy criminals attempting to double- or even triple-cross one another. But this game of cat and mouse between Jack and Nora gets boring real quick, as Gordon’s screenplay focuses on explaining every twist and swerve as if we are as dumb as Chad.
There’s a potentially meaty role there for Green, as well. Green long ago mastered the art of playing sultry women whose attention was often deadly. Nora is one of those women, too, but she’s older and not as desired as she once was. One can imagine a younger Nora easily convincing a couple of dupes like Dani and Chad to do anything she asked, but now they put up a fight, even if it’s one they’re likely to lose. Green rarely seems comfortable, though, perhaps recognizing that this project is one not worth the effort.
Campbell continues to do solid work at this latter stage of his career. His highlights will always be his work on two James Bond movies, Casino Royale and Goldeneye, while he’ll forever be ridiculed for the disastrous 2011 Green Lantern he made with Ryan Reynolds. That said, his recent work on Memory, The Protege, and Dirty Angels (also with Eva Green) shows that he hasn’t lost a step. The fault with Just Play Dead isn’t with him, but a tedious screenplay that doesn’t push its stars very far, and the feeling that this film was dusted off from the back of a drawer where it’d been hiding for about twenty years.
There have been some pretty bad biopics about rappers, Get Rich or Die Tryin’, Notorious, and All Eyez On Me, just to name a few. But Universal struck gold with Straight Outta Compton more than a decade ago and has been looking to tap into an audience that wanted more. Coming up next is Snoop, Craig Brewer’s film chronicling the rise of hip-hop superstar and cultural icon Snoop Dogg. It doesn’t hurt that he also has a connection to many of the N.W.A. members, too.
With Jonathan Daviss set to play Snoop aka Calvin Broadus Jr., Myles Bullock as producer and Death Row Records co-founder Dr. Dre, and Lauren London as Snoop’s mother, THR reports that Camron Jones will play Tupac Shakur, with Algee Smith as Warren G.
Jones is best known for the Prime Video series Panic. Tupac needs no introduction, does he? Even though reports are that he was murdered in 1996, we all know he’s livin’ large on his own private island somewhere. Tupac was played previously by Demetrius Shipp in All Eyes On Me, and by Anthony Mackie in Notorious.
Smith is known for his performances in Kathyrn Bigelow’s Detroit, Judas and the Black Messiah, and on HBO’s Euphoria.
Tupac and Snoop were homies for a while, and collaborated on the track “2 Of Amerikaz Most Wanted”. However, they eventually fell out as part of the silly East Coast/West Coast rivalry.
Like many of the rappers who emerged in the ’90s and ’00s, Snoop, Tupac, and even Warren G had movie careers. Tupac had memorable performances in two beloved films, Poetic Justice and Juice, while Snoop starred in Soul Plane, Bones, Training Day, The Wash, and Netflix’s recent vampire flick, Day Shift.
