Whenever a director is replaced on a major film there is usually some conversation about who is going to receive the credit for it. Who did the most work? Whose film is it really? We just saw this play out between Zack Snyder and Joss Whedon on Justice League, with the former getting credit despite the latter’s extensive reshoots. Now we’re seeing something similar on Solo: A Star Wars Story, where Ron Howard stepped in to replace Phil Lord and Chris Miller who were booted because of creative differences.
“His staging ability is so fucking brilliant. I think he went in and he was like a laser, working out what needed to be done when he looked at the footage. And then, as things moved on, everybody felt so secure with him. And they gave him more. He reshot a lot more than was originally intended.”
I’m surprised they didn’t let him start over from scratch and toss everything his predecessors did. Why not? Lucasfilm really didn’t like the comic vibe the duo brought, when apparently a different tone is what was called for. In fact, Bettany says the movie calls for more of a gangster movie vibe, something we haven’t seen in Star Wars before…
“It’s Han Solo’s story, and of course his story would be a caper. On one level it’s a gangster movie. That’s really interesting, because it’s within the canon but really different. It’s f**king Han Solo!”
We won’t have to wait long to see for ourselves because Solo: A Star Wars Story opens May 25th 2018. [TotalFilm]
When you get to the bare bones of it, Small Town Crime is a twisted redemption story. Mike Kendall (John
Hawkes) is a former cop whose alcoholism was the catalyst for him being removed
from the force. Mike was involved in a traffic stop gone horribly wrong that
left multiple people shot and dead, including his partner. Mike was drunk on
the job during this incident, leaving him disgraced and ostracized from of all
his former colleagues – who blame him for what happened to his partner.
Mike’s life has spiraled further out of control since being
let go from the force. He is living off of unemployment benefits and is only
going to job interviews to meet the requirements for his benefits to continue.
He spends the rest of his time at local bars and drinking at his own house or
with his sister Kelly Banks, (Octavia Spencer) and her husband Teddy (Anthony Anderson). Kelly and
Teddy are concerned about the path Mike is heading down, but there seems to be
no reasoning with him.
One fateful evening Mike goes on a drunken bender. He ends
up driving his car all around town and when he wakes up, he finds himself in
the middle of a field. As he is driving back into town he notices the body of a
woman on the side of the road. He immediately puts her in his car and takes her
to the hospital, where she dies shortly after. Mike decides to take it upon
himself to find out who did this to her, and hopes that solving this case will
be what he needs to show his former coworkers and the police department that he
is deserving of his job back. Mike doesn’t realize that investigating this
murder will lead him down a rabbit hole that will not only put his life in
danger, but the lives of those close to him as well.
Small Town Crime
is another collaboration between Ian and Eshom Nelms who both wrote and
directed the film. The film tries to keep the audience engaged by throwing in a
couple of twists and turns, but all of them seemingly fall short. The film
becomes a convoluted and jumbled mess that is full of seedy characters, most of
which you never feel any real connection with. Ian and Eshom are trying to set
up a noir–style detective drama, but Small
Town Crime never truly seems to find its direction, just like the main
character, the film seems to flounder while heading towards an unfulfilling
climax. Throughout the film it is interesting to watch Mike manipulate every
situation to his benefit. He knows how to play the system and everyone around
him, and he uses these skills through the entirety of the film. Small Town Crime leaves a lot to be
desired and there is a noticeable lack of energy throughout the movie. Couple
that with no truly memorable scenes that stand out in any way and it’s safe to
say that you can avoid this film for now, maybe catch it later on down your
Netflix queue when you have a couple hours to kill one evening.
The 2018 lineup for summer blockbusters has film fans salivating, especially for aficionados of action and sci-fi. Reboots of Tomb Raider and Robin Hood come out in the spring, along with Steven Spielberg’s take on the novel Ready Player One. Those will be followed by the mandatory installment from the Avengers universe -Avengers: Infinity War; another Star Wars offering – Star Wars: Han Solo; and three new X-Men chapters with X-Men: The New Mutants, Deadpool 2, and Ant-Man and the Wasp.
One of the other eagerly-awaited big franchise sequels to keep an eye out for is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, which continues from 2015’s reboot, Jurassic World. The aforementioned Spielberg was the first to bring Michael Crichton’s novel to the big screen in 1993. This was followed by The Lost World: Jurassic Park in and the third of the trilogy, Jurassic Park III (1997).
The series captured the imaginations of audiences of all ages and became a merchandising juggernaut. From clothing and lunch boxes to a host of video games, the Jurassic franchise was a universally recognized brand; and it continues to be today. A newer video game is being created by Frontier Developments, producers of Elite: Dangerous, to be released in conjunction with the movie’s premiere. The game allows users to create their own dinosaurs and develop a unique Jurassic World on Isla Nubar. Not surprisingly, the dinosaur chain has become popular with online gamers who enjoy Jurassic-themed casino games play these video slots at bitcasino.io. The site offers three different version of the Jurassic World experience.
Chris Pratt, currently one of Hollywood’s hottest action heroes and bankable stars, will return as dinosaur-trainer extraordinaire, Owen Grady, while Bryce Dallas Howard also returns Jurassic World resort’s manager, Claire Dearing. One of the most talked about casting moves is the callback of Jeff Goldblum, as chaos theorist Ian Malcolm, who starred in the first two chapters of Jurassic Park. Goldblum, you might remember, was recently seen in Pratt’s other franchise sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2.
Also returning is B.D. Wong while extraordinary character actors James Cromwell, Ted Levine and Toby Keith will be joining the cast. With the Jurassic World writing tandem of Kevin Connolly and Colin Trevorrow writing the script and acclaimed Spanish director J.A. Bayona (The Orphanage, The Impossible) in the chair, everything indicates another critical and commercial success. The film’s status is currently in post-production and the first of what will likely be many tantalizing trailers was recently given to audiences.
From comments made by Bayona and producer Frank Marshall, the storyline appears to revolve around a volcanic eruption on Isla Nublar, still home to Jurassic World, prompting the staff to attempt to relocate the dinosaurs off-island. Obviously, there is an ethical dilemma surrounding the risk/reward of such an endeavour and, should it succeed, the story has numerous potential directions to follow with the implications of dinosaurs on the mainland. We had a taste in The Lost World: Jurassic Park of a dinosaur in an urban setting as a T-Rex brought some serious destruction to downtown San Diego. With a bigger budget and state of the art CGI, such a nightmare scenario could surely be outdone by next year’s film.
Today sees the release of Netfix’s biggest original film yet, the fantasy/adventure cop thriller Bright, and of course it’s been given the Funko treatment! Set in a world where humans coexist with orcs, elves, and fairies…although “coexist” might be a stretch, the film stars Will Smith as the human cop Daryl Ward, with Joel Edgerton as his orc partner, Nick Jakoby, who must save the day when a powerful weapon is found that could alter the world forever.
The line, which you can find right here at Entertainment Earth, features Daryl Ward with his trusty shotgun (or the Chase variant with magic wand), Nick Jakoby, and the mysterious elf Tikka played by Lucy Fry. There is another for the evil dark elf Leilah, played by Noomi Rapace, but you can only find it at Target.
Funko’s Bright Pop! Vinyl figures will be available in March, but you can pre-order them now!
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Nobody bats an eye when a cop thriller, probably done by director David Ayer who has made his share of them, follows the familiar beats of mismatched cops in a conspiracy involving their corrupt brothers behind the shield. It’s a tired, been-there done-that trope but we watch and we love it anyways. For me, they tend to be some of my favorite movies and Ayer, who also tackled other brotherhood-based flicks like Fury, Sabotage, and The Fast and the Furious, is one of the best at them. But you throw in some elves, a few orcs, a magic wand and suddenly everyone is up in arms. Bright, the new $90M blockbuster thriller from Netflix, may look ambitious like a cross between End of Watch and Warcraft, but its aims are as modest as any buddy cop flick.
Better yet, think Alien Nation. I remember my Dad loving that 1980s show about an LAPD cop teamed up with an extraterrestrial partner. Bright, which features a script by former hotshot writer Max Landis (Chronicle, followed by a bunch of stuff that really sucks), sets up its weird Lord of the Rings dynamic through a rolling hip-hop montage, spray painted images on the LA streets. It looks like a remake of Colors is about to pop off. By the time it’s over we really know all we need to know. The elves are the 1%, the fashion, entertainment, and political elite; while the orcs are the downtrodden, hated by a society that blames them for a decision made thousands of years prior. They work menial jobs and form themselves into gangs just to survive. Meanwhile humans are just sort of stuck in the middle playing both sides, hoping to avoid a mystical war that they probably wouldn’t survive. There are fairies, too, but as Smith’s disgruntled cop Daryl Ward tells us after bashing one with a bat just for hovering around his yard, “Fairy lives don’t matter today.”
It’s a bad joke that shows just how tasteless swapping race for species can be, but thankfully Bright keeps most of its humor of the familiar dysfunctional partners variety. Ward is a human who has been partnered up with Nick Jakoby (Joel Edgerton, unfamiliar until he starts speaking), the police force’s first and only orc officer. The other cops hate him, and even other orcs despise Jakoby for being a sellout. There’s something about him being “unblooded”, a term that apparently means he was raised by humans and hasn’t been initiated in orc ways or something. After being shot by an orc, who would later escape from a pursuing Jakoby, Ward doesn’t trust his partner, either.
We’ve all seen this movie before. The partners will bicker and fight but a shared threat will bring them together. Okay, so that shared threat has never been a race of rebellious elves before, but so what? It’s all the same, man. A literal magic wand is found and, in this world Landis and Ayer have created, magic wands are “nuclear bombs that grant wishes.” There are supposedly three of them, but one is bad enough. This one is found in the possession of Tikka (Lucy Fry), an insane elf who is trying to keep it from the clutches of Leilah (Noomi Rapace), an eleven badass who plans to use it to bring about the return of the Dark Lord, a Voldemort-like figure everyone is afraid. It’s up to Jakoby and Ward to protect Tikka, keep the wand away from Leilah, but also from dirty cops and the gangs that want to use it for their own nefarious purpose. Meanwhile, a special division in charge of tracking magic artifacts (led by a snazzy, violet-haired Edgar Ramirez) is also on their trail.
Replace “magic wand” with “suitcase full of cocaine” and this is the plot of every movie David Ayer has ever done.
Bright is an easy movie to make fun of if that’s all you’re looking to do. The allegory it makes to prejudice, equality, and criminal justice doesn’t always go over smoothly, but to its credit these ideas aren’t hammered into us constantly. Instead the bulk of the film is focused on the chase, as Ward and Jakoby battle from block-to-block dodging foes of various species all with differing agendas. In that regard the action is quite brisk and exciting, with Will Smith delivering cool, off the cuff one-liners in a way that reminds you why he was such a huge star before he started taking himself too seriously. And Edgerton is just as impressive as the painfully earnest, naïve Jakoby. He’s so much like Ethan Hawke’s character in Training Day (which Ayer also wrote) you almost expect there to be some wild magical connection. It wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibility for this flick.
I didn’t want to know how this west coast version of Middle Earth came to be. Every time the film grinds to a screeching halt it’s when they try to flesh out the mythology. Rambling, overlong expository dialogue about Dark Lords and Inferni go over like a dead weight, and really have no bearing on what Jakoby and Ward need to get through. They just need to survive the night, history doesn’t really come into play except to enlighten the audience, which is the wrong way to go about it. Landis’ script, which Ayer apparently fashioned to make it more in his voice, is more successful when details are revealed in the flow of the action. We come to learn the term “Bright” refers to special beings who have the power to control magic wands, since they incinerate pretty much everybody else.
Ayer takes a lot of heat but he’s good at what he knows. His Suicide Squad was killed by critics but fans dug it and the film was a box office smash. I have a feeling there will be a similar split with Bright, which Netflix has already deemed worthy of a sequel. It’s imperfect and perhaps could have been more, but Bright successfully merges fantastical qualities with the cop movie clichés we know and keep coming back for.
I can’t think of a better way to end the crazy year of 2017 than with more news on Quentin Tarantino’s Star Trek movie, something that would have been unfathomable just weeks ago. It was earlier this month that we first learned of Tarantino’s pitch to J.J. Abrams and Paramount to direct the movie, which they loved and began setting into motion right away. A writer’s room was set up with The Revenant screenwriter Mark L. Smith emerging as the frontrunner to pen the script, and now Deadline confirms this insane gig is his.
Smith is a known commodity to Abrams as he’s also the writer behind Bad Robot’s upcoming WWII film, Overlord. He was part of Tarantino’s writers room that included Lindsey Beer (Chaos Walking), and Drew Pearce (Iron Man 3) and Megan Amram (The Good Place). Just the thought of a Tarantino writers room is bonkers to me. That Tarantino’s not writing the script himself is still disappointing, but since he’s already mandated it to be R-rated I suspect he’ll also do some rewrites.
There’s still no word on who would star in this movie, whether it will take place in the same universe as Abrams’ movies, or if will be an expansion of Tarantino’s favorite Star Trek episodes like “City on the Edge of Forever.”
While Smith gets cracking on the script Tarantino will be busy working on his Manson-era film which opens in August 2019.
What do you do when your eldest child, a 13 year old boy, the being that is responsible for saving your own life is responsible for taking your four year old daughter’s life? Do you forget about them, all the while letting them rot away in a prison cell for the rest of their life or do you continue to fight for them, giving them that unconditional love that only a parent knows for their child? What do you do when that fight for one of your kids makes you feel as though you are neglecting or don’t love the other as much? What do you do when at the end of the day you realize that even though one isn’t physically here on Earth, that you have essentially lost you’re only two kids? Do you continue and push on in the fight for their lives as well as your own do you just give up? Finally, what do you do when you have somewhat moved on, bringing another child into this life and it comes time to develop a relationship with your child who is in prison and the new child that you have? Do you keep as far apart as you can or do you forgive? These heavy and ethical questions as well as many others are what is at the center of the Investigation Discovery documentary, The Family I Had.
The Family I Had, chronicles the story of, Charity, a single mother whose world was forever changed on February 4, 2007 when her 13 year old son, Paris, murdered her 4 year old daughter, Ella. This documentary meets up with her family, including Paris and her mother, Kyla, 10 years later and asks them to recount this unfortunate situation as well as the things that may have played a factor in this tragedy.
Besides the incredibly sad, but still very intriguing story, one of the things that I loved about this documentary were the questions (besides the ethical ones) that it raised. What is the role of genetics and a pre-disposition to mental illness; is it all nature or does the factor of nurture come into play? What is the role of the justice system? Should they solely be focused on removing the criminals from the larger society and keeping them as isolated as possible or should they also be focused on the rehabilitation of these very people because they are still human at the end of the day with the possibility for growth? Why does it always take for some grave incident for people to actually start paying attention and try to fix some of the problems that have been festering all of their lives? Though, some of these questions require an educational background in the behavioral sciences, I still do think that they are questions that should be heavily thought about because even though the likelihood of this situation happening to you is probably pretty slim; the reasons, implications, and the outcomes are very real and way too common for a lot of people.
At the center of this story is very a chaotic family dynamic. Besides the main story, we learn that Paris, before murdering his sister, had previously shown psychopathic tendencies that were never given the treatment that they deserved, and also that his father suffered from a mental illness. We learn that Kyla has been married 7/8 times, was on trial for the death of her husband (Charity’s father) which she was later equated for, and has never really had the best relationship with Charity. We also learn that Charity, herself, wasn’t all that much of a saint either; she dealt with her own addiction problems as well as horrible choices in the men that she chose to spend her life with.
You can see how this kind of family dynamic would have and could have given birth to someone like Paris, it’s this never ending cycle of hurt, pain, disappointment, and anger that could only be stopped if someone took it upon themselves to say “It ends here.” Thankfully, in this story, as it seems, Charity was the person to do that, and I think that it all stemmed from the ability to forgive. Charity had to forgive not only her son and herself, but also her mother if it ever meant that they as a family could finally try to move on, bringing in that sense of peace that was never really there to begin with.
If you have the opportunity to watch this documentary, please do. The story itself, sounds like it was ripped from an episode of Law and Order, if you’re into those kinds of show, then you’ll definitely enjoy this. However, digging a bit more deeply into the story, at the center, I believe that this movie provides for a wonderful lesson in forgiveness that I think we can all learn something from.
The Family I Had premieres on Investigation Discovery on December 21, 2017 at 9/8 c.
The hook for Downsizing is a simple one: Alexander Payne does sci-fi. For many who have followed the director as he’s frequently charted the discombobulated lives of normal, everyday people, this is probably a cause for concern and excitement. Well, just stick with that, because Downsizing is every bit an Alexander Payne movie but flipped on its head and, ironically, blown up to gigantic proportions. His knack for human comedy is still there but this may be the most hopeful film we’ve seen from Payne yet, even if some of the personal themes he relishes are swallowed up by the larger ideas the genre affords.
No matter what, Payne’s casting is top notch and his nails two home runs with Matt Damon and the invaluable Hong Chau. Whenever Downsizing starts to get too big for its britches, the thoughtful, warm-hearted normalcy of Damon and Chau’s characters shines through. When overpopulation becomes too much of a drain on the planet’s resources, Dr. Jorgen Asbjørnsen (Rolff Lassgard) devises an ingenious solution to the problem. He’s come up with a way to literally shrink down the human population, devising that smaller people will consume much less. Within years communities of “smalls” are everywhere, with entire families living like kings in what amount to dollhouses. Why? Because all of that money you have stretches a lot further when your car is the size of a Matchbox. And that becomes the main reason why people decide to shrink down; not because of some desire to save the planet, but to save money and change their lives. Those who need some convincing can sit in on an infomercial, featuring tiny Neil Patrick Harris and li’l Laura Dern, living it up in their fun-sized McMansion.
That’s where unhappy married couple Paul and Audrey Safranek (Damon and Kristen Wiig) come in. He’s an altruistic everyman and occupational therapist who hates his job and hates the mountain of debt he can’t climb out of. He and Audrey not a change, so they reluctantly agree to get small together, but circumstances quite beyond his control find him the only one who has gone through with it. That leaves Paul all alone, with his giant-sized home and his giant-sized wedding ring, now meaningless, in the happy Leisureland community.
The beginning of Downsizing is where Payne and co-writer Jim Taylor make the greatest use of the high concept. It’s fascinating to watch them explore the banal daily occurrences in the life of someone who is about 5-inches tall. Paul still needs to find his new life and so he needs a job, and traveling great distances is a different kind of headache. And Payne uses this chance to explore some intriguing political angles, like the idea that the small contribute less to the national economy, and thus shouldn’t be privy to the same level of entitlements. As Paul becomes involved with a pair of black market dealers (Christoph Waltz and Udo Kier in annoying Euro-trash mode) who use their tiny status as a money making opportunity, Payne unveils his true plan for Downsizing. It’s not to sit back and simply have fun with the concept, his own personal Honey I Shrunk the Kids. His ambitions are much broader.
Chau surprises as the film’s true central character, Ngoc Lan, and her backstory will have eyes rolling from sea to shining sea. A one-legged Vietnamese immigrant who was forcibly shrunk after she was imprisoned, only to escape into America inside of a TV box where she was captured and forced to work as a housecleaner in Leisureland. When not sweeping up after the likes of those wealthier than her she resides in a ghetto just outside of town. Her English is broken and she’s at first very off-putting, making demands of Paul that he is too selfless to refuse. Our initial instinct is to dislike her, but Ngoc Lan seems to evolve just as Payne’s narrative grows beyond its most basic premise. As she becomes an unexpected fixture in Paul’s life, he begins to look at the world beyond what’s right in front of him.
Payne fully embraces the sci-fi conceit, going so far as to posit an entire doomsday scenario created by the shrinking technology. The film begins to drift along, unfocused, while Payne explore the idea of religion in a world where shrinking exists, while also touching upon the continued economic, social, and racial inequality that shrinking was unable to solve. Downsizing takes on more than it can properly handle, despite the winning turns by Damon and Chau.
Where the film is an unquestioned success is in the visual effects, with Phedon Papamichael’s cinematography, Jim Price’s visuals, and Stefania Cella’s production design creating a perfect microcosm of a larger world. It’s more than just making normal setpieces small, but capturing their depth and proportion to normal-sized objects that matter most. They could’ve been a major distraction if done poorly, but they pull it off and make it look surprisingly easy.
Like the disillusioned characters we’ve become so familiar with in Alexander Payne’s movies, Downsizing ends in a very different place than where it began. From a kooky idea ripped from a B-movie plot emerges an engaging love story and humanist tale. Payne’s ambitions may get away from him a little bit, but there’s no downsizing how big the film is on ideas, heart, and sincerity.
While Studio Ghibli and the legendary Hayao Miyazaki are to re-emerge soon after a brief hiatus, the torch has been picked up by the animators at Studio Ponoc, which is made up of many former Ghibli employees. Their upcoming film Mary and the Witch’s Flower was already a big hit in Japan, and because we always tend to get anime movies around the beginning of the new year it’s finally our turn.
A new U.S. trailer features voicework from the American cast, including Ruby Barnhill (The BFG), Kate Winslet, Jim Broadbent, and Ewen Bremner. Directed by Hiromasa Yonebayashi, who previously helmed the excellent films When Marnie was There and The Secret World of Arrietty, the story follows a young girl who has one adventurous night gifted with the power of a witch. Here’s the synopsis:
Mary is an ordinary young girl stuck in the country with her Great-Aunt Charlotte and seemingly no adventures or friends in sight. She follows a mysterious cat into the nearby forest, where she discovers an old broomstick and the strange Fly-by-Night flower, a rare plant that blossoms only once every seven years and only in that forest. Together the flower and the broomstick whisk Mary above the clouds, and far away to Endor College – a school of magic run by headmistress Madam Mumblechook and the brilliant Doctor Dee. But there are terrible things happening at the school, and when Mary tells a lie, she must risk her life to try to set things right.
There’s rarely a lot to look forward to in the junkpile of January, but Mary and the Witch’s Flower looks great and is at the top of my list of things to see. The film opens on January 18th.
At this point every aspect of Star Wars: The Last Jedi has been picked over, combed through, and analyzed tighter than an episode of CSI. In the final tally, Rian Johnson left a lot of stuff on the cutting room floor that he confirms will be part of a huge Bluray release in the future, and there are apparently dozens of celebrity cameos that most people have missed. Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Princes Harry and Edward appear, along with Warwick Davis (of course!), Justin Theroux, Edgar Wright, a whole bushel of Game of Thrones actors, and many more. Check out the full list here . But one that didn’t make it to the big screen was Tom Hardy’s, but details on it have been revealed and his scene sounds pretty cool.
A group of stormtroopers get in the elevator and our heroes are nervous they are going to get caught. One of the stormtroopers slowly turns to Finn and gives him a look. Finn turns around in his Imperial officer uniform and asks him what his problem is. The stormtrooper, played by Hardy with a southern accent, says “I know who you are… FN 2187! Damn boy, I never took you for officer material!” The tension is cut by the reveal that the two grew up together, but the troopers are somehow unaware of FN’s treason. While Finn’s act of desertion is a legend in the Resistance, maybe the First Order hid that information from their army so others might not get the same idea.
Damn, I would’ve liked to have seen that. Finn and Rose’s side story could have used a bit more detail, and so could Finn’s history as a member of the First Order. But I can see why it was dropped since he’s identified by Captain Phasma just moments later. If he’s recognized twice in the span of a few minutes that was a pretty shitty disguise. Hopefully that scene makes it to the eventual home release. [Slashfilm]
