Fans of Yahya Abdul-Mateen II might be pissed that Wonder Man isn’t getting a second season, but just relax. He’s got plenty of other stuff coming up, and one of the most anticipated is the civil rights thriller, By Any Means, in which he co-stars with Mark Wahlberg in the story of a mafia hitman and FBI agent investigating a real-life murder. The film is directed by Elegance Bratton, a military vet who impressed with his 2022 debut, The Inspection.
The final trailer just dropped courtesy of Paramount Pitures. By Any Means fits Bratton’s themes perfectly. The film stars Wahlberg as mafia hitman and informant Gregory Scarpa, with Abdul-Mateen as FBI agent Wayne Strider. Set in the 1960s, Scarpa and Strider must team up to investigate the murders of civil rights activists James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner in Mississippi.
Also in the cast are Nicole Beharie, Josh Lucas, Ethan Embry, LisaGay Hamilton, LaChanze, David Strathairn, and Giancarlo Esposito as civil rights leader Vernon Dahmer, whose murder Scarpa also helped the FBI investigate.
Paramount Pictures will release By Any Means in theaters on September 4th.
Sometimes, good things come to those who wait. At one time, Nicholas Hoult was one of many young actors up for the role of Harry Potter, ultimately losing the role to Daniel Radcliffe. The rest, of course, is history as the franchise became one of the most successful of all-time. While it seemed Hoult might never get his time in the Wizarding World, Deadline reports he will actually get his shot in season two of the upcoming Harry Potter series for HBO. No, he won’t be playing an adult Harry, although that might’ve been cool.
While rumors have insisted Hoult would take on the role of Voldemort, that’s not the case. Instead, Hoult will reportedly take on the role of pompous celebrity wizard, Gilderoy Lockhart, who was famously played by Kenneth Branagh in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Gilderoy is a self-satisfied author and supposed adventurer who became famous for writing about his grand adventures and encounters with rare magical beasts. He became Hogwarts’ Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, where the truth of his exploits was eventually revealed.
HBO’s plan is to dedicate each season to one of JK Rowling’s books, so it makes sense that season two would focus on Chamber of Secrets.
Hoult joins a cast that includes Dominic McLaughlin as Harry Potter, Arabella Stanton as Hermione Granger, and Alastair Stout as Ron Weasley, Rory Wilmot as Neville Longbottom, Amos Kitson as Dudley Dursley, Louise Brealey as Madam Rolanda Hooch, Anton Lesser as Garrick Ollivander, John Lithgow as Albus Dumbledore, Janet McTeer as Minerva McGonagall, Paapa Essiedu as Severus Snape, Nick Frost as Rubeus Hagrid, Bel Powley as Petunia Dursley, Daniel Rigby as Vernon Dursley, Lox Pratt as Draco Malfoy, Johnny Flynn as Lucius Malfoy, Katherine Parkinson as Molly Weasley, Leo Earley as Seamus Finnigan, Alessia Leoni as Parvati Patil, Sienna Moosah as Lavender Brown, and Bertie Carvel as Cornelius Fudge.
Harry Potter season one hits HBO this Christmas with Francesca Gardiner as showrunner.
Coming up for Hoult later this year is David Leitch’s How to Rob a Bank. He’ll also return as Lex Luthor in James Gunn’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow.
Following the demise of the SnyderVerse, Zack Snyder and Warner Bros. had a very public split. That was five years ago, and after a failed stint at Netflix, Snyder returned home to WB on Monday to host a screening of John Boorman’s 1981 Arthurian adventure, Excalibur. It was the first step in bringing Snyder back into the fold, and possibly where his Escape from New York remake could end up.
According to Page Six, Snyder’s received a “hero’s welcome” from the WB employees. He participated in a Q&A high-powered execs, Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy. It’s clear they want to rebuild that relationship.
Part of that process could be Escape from New York, a remake of John Carpenter’s sci-fi classic that Snyder plans to write and direct. The project is currently with StudioCanal, but its parent company CANAL+ recently inked a new partnership with Warner Bros. Doing the math on this one, it’s easy to see where Snyder’s film will land. Snyder wouldn’t have been my first choice for this one. Plenty of talented filmmakers have tried and failed. But if we get the Snyder who gave us Dawn of the Dead, it might actually work.
One thing you won’t see? A return of the SnyderVerse. The report says there’s no indication that WB has any interest in reviving Snyder’s abandoned DCEU. It’s got something going already with James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios, and that needs time to succeed or fail on its own.
That said, don’t be surprised if the Snyder faithful, who are legion, start bellowing about Snyder Cuts or whatnot again.
JJ Abrams being attached to anything that isn’t Star Wars comes with a certain kind of “mystery box” expectation. Probably, a lot of people assumed when they saw the trailer for The End of Oak Street that they would be in for some undercover Cloverfield sequel. I’m not going to confirm or deny anything in that regard, because in truth, it doesn’t really matter. Abrams, and more notably, director David Robert Mitchell, have delivered a wildly entertaining genre mash-up that does something loads of Jurassic World movies have been unable to do, and that’s give us the most terrifying dinosaurs since the original Jurassic Park.
Mitchell, in a stark departure from his 2014 breakout horror It Follows, but showing some of the same eccentric quirk as his Under the Silver Lake, takes us back to 1982 with a film that is many things at once. We’re introduced to the troubled Platt family; patriarch Greg, played by Ewan McGregor, is working so hard at delivering pizzas that he leaves the neighborhood cookout to do it. Anne Hathaway is mama bear Denise, who just wants her family to spend more time together, but she’s also secretly writing a book about her unhappy life. Maisy Stella and Christian Convery play their kids, Audrey and Brian, who have the typical kid problems; boys, bullies, and their rambunctious dog Starbuck pissing off the neighbor.
A freak storm and a flash of light change everything. The neighborhood is changing; a weird plant growing in a neighbor’s yard, mounds of unidentified poop in another, geysers of steaming hot water shooting up from the street. Mitchell, working from a script he wrote, teases out the full extent of the mystery. It’s clear that the neighborhood has been transported to prehistoric times, the stomping brontosauruses and flying pterodactyls are a dead giveaway, but we have no understanding why.
The End of Oak Street isn’t going to waste its time getting bogged down in the details, anyway. This is a fight for survival that the Platts must face while also dealing with all of their family strife. One of the things I admire most is that this film doesn’t do what the Spielberg dinosaur movies do, which is romanticize the prehistoric beasts. Those films spend more time gawking at them and being astonished by them that it’s impossible to fear them. But the dinos here are purely out to kill, and pretty soon the entire neighborhood is getting devoured, ripped apart to shreds, or worse. The Platts don’t sit around wondering what breed of dino is on their ass trying to eat them; they’re either fighting to kill or fighting to get the Hell away.
When the dinosaurs are on the rampage, the film is genuinely scary and looks great. Even some of the less intimidating creatures, like a giant snake-like thing that almost looks like it’s smiling, are impressively realized. I could make some complaints about the live-action stuff not being totally in sync with the CGI creations; sometimes the actors seem to be looking in the wrong direction, but this is a minor gripe and doesn’t happen too often. Also, this movie is really funny, too. Yes, it’s mostly dark, gallows humor seen in some of the more over-the-top deaths. But there’s another scene, involving a photograph and an unexpected sexual act, that is downright hilarious because it happens in the midst of such a dire situation.
This is shaping up to be not only one of the busiest years for Hathaway, but also one of the most lucrative. It’s also been something of a mixed bag, with Mother Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, The Odyssey, and Verity on the horizon. As Denise, she’s the strong-willed heart of The End of Oak Street, a protective matriarch who engages and encourages her family while also harboring bigger dreams of her own. We also see that she won’t take anybody’s crap, either, and knows her way around a shotgun.
Mitchell takes his foot off the gas in the disappointing final act. After a shocking tragedy that will genuinely shake up audiences, Mitchell introduces a flimsy time travel conceit, think Back to the Future mumbo jumbo, to deliver a conclusion that undercuts so much well-earned credibility. Still, I had a great time with The End of Oak Street, and it’s the kind of film that benefits from being a shared experience in a theater.
Warner Bros. releases The End of Oak Street in theaters on August 14th.
Following the critical success of 2023’s Air, Ben Affleck’s next turn behind the camera is something wholly different. Animals, which Affleck directs, stars, and co-writes with Connor O. McIntyre and Billy Ray, is a politically charged kidnapping thriller set to hit Netflix in October. I’m a little surprised we haven’t heard about it debuting at TIFF or NYFF. Perhaps Telluride?
Affleck stars as Los Angeles mayoral candidate Mark Kimball, whose carefully constructed public image takes a hit when he and his wife, played by Kerry Washington, receive an ominous phone call. Their son has been kidnapped for ransom, and while they scrounge to come up with the money, it exposes parts of their lives that they’d rather be kept private.
The film also stars Gillian Anderson, Steven Yeun, Luis Gerardo Méndez, Adriana Paz, Ray Fisher, Christopher Woodley, Matt Gerald, and Jacob Estrada.
I’m a fan of Affleck on both sides of the camera. He makes the kind of adult-oriented dramas and thrillers the studio system has largely left behind. As much as I liked him as Batman, getting away from it was the best move for his career.
Netflix will give Animals a limited theatrical release, as well as streaming, on October 9th.
Duke Nicholson, the grandson of Jack Nicholson, stars in his first leading role in the crime thriller, The Deputy. Nicholson is joined by a great ensemble of William H. Macy, Tiffany Haddish, Stephen Dorff, Billie Lourd, and Julia Fox. Damn. The film is directed by Matt Sukkar in his debut, with a script by Narcos and The Great Wall writer Carlo Bernard.
As seen in the new trailer, Nicholson plays Deputy Toby Sawyer who is tasked by his Chief to watch over a dead body until the coroner arrives, only to lose track of the corpse. In the quest to recover it, he reveals small-town corruption that he is encouraged to ignore.
Haddish plays Deputy Amanda Jackson, who appears to be the only one Toby can trust.
SYNOPSIS: Chief Kreuger (William H. Macy) assigns rookie Deputy Toby Sawyer (Duke Nicholson) to guard a dead body. But when the corpse vanishes, Toby launches a frantic search that unearths decades of small-town rot. Pressured to look the other way, Toby finds a lone ally in Deputy Amanda Jackson (Tiffany Haddish) and sets his sights to unravel a lethal web of corruption to clear his name in a town where secrets stay buried.
A dark secret threatens Lea Seydoux’s seemingly happy marriage in the trailer for Gentle Monster, Austrian filmmaker Marie Kreutzer’s psychological drama, which premiered earlier this year at Cannes where it competed for the Palme d’Or.
Seydoux plays Lucy, a successful pianist who sets her career aside to help her husband, only to have their seemingly normal family life upended by a police raid. When her husband is arrested for a terrible crime, Lucy must face the possibility that the life she knew may have been a lie.
Joining Seydoux in the cast are Laurence Rupp, Jella Haase, and screen legend Catherine Deneuve.
The film is Kreutzer’s first since 2022’s Corsage, which starred Vicky Krieps as Austrian Empress Elisabeth.
SYNOPSIS: From director and writer Marie Kreutzer (Corsage, Austria’s entry for the 95th Academy Awards), Gentle Monster tells the story of concert pianist Lucy (Léa Seydoux), who has just relocated her family to a country house hoping to ease her husband Philip’s (Laurence Rupp) severe burnout. Before they have a chance to set up their new home, an early morning police visit tears their life apart. Trapped between the man she loves and the fear of what he may have done, Lucy must face the situation alone as her world unravels. With a cast that includes Jella Haase alongside the legendary, Academy Award nominee Catherine Deneuve, Gentle Monster asks what we do when someone we love turns out to be someone we never really knew.
Netflix will give Gentle Monster a limited theatrical release on October 30th before streaming exclusively beginning November 18th.
There are some things that a child simply shouldn’t see, because not only will they be unable to understand what happened, but it could change them forever. That’s at the heart of Beth de Araújo film, Josephine, which won Sundance’s Grand Jury and Audience Awards earlier this year.
Josephine stars newcomer Mason Lily Reeves in an extraordinary performance as Josephine, an eight-year-old girl who witnesses a shocking assault while at the park with her father. The film isn’t about how her parents deal with what happened, it really puts the focus on Josephine as she struggles to understand what she saw.
Channing Tatum and Gemma Chan play Josephine’s parents, who have very different attitudes when it comes to raising their kid. As Josephine begins to act out and ask questions they aren’t prepared to answer, it puts their family on the brink of collapse.
I don’t want to give away too much, but I’ll say that this film had the audience shook, myself included. There’s just something so painful about the way Araújo puts us right in Josephine’s shoes, forcing us to feel the child’s fear, confusion, and anger. You can check out my review here.
Also starring Philip Ettinger, Syra McCarthy, Eleanore Pienta, and Michael Angelo Covino, Josephine will open in theaters on November 20th from Sumerian Pictures.
Did you know the Girl Scouts sell over $800M worth of Girl Scout Cookies each year? That’s a lot of Thin Mints! It also shows that all of those young girls you see pushing product on those of us with a sweet tooth are making a lot of money. And with big money, comes big pressure. Alysa Nahmias’s acclaimed documentary Cookie Queens is about four Girl Scout cookie sellers who couldn’t be more different on the surface. But they all have the same ultimate goal: to be the best Girl Scout cookie seller they can be, albeit for many different reasons.
For adorable five-year-old Ara, she’d be happy to sell 55 boxes of cookies. But she’s just as happy doing Pilates, or playing the piano, or just having fun with her Dad. For 12-year-old junior entrepreneur Olive, anything less than 10,000 boxes sold would be a disappointment, and she’s got the machinery in place to make sure she won’t fail. These Girl Scouts come from all walks of life, but they all prove to be funny, shockingly insightful, resourceful, and driven. At the same time, Nahmias doesn’t shy away from the unsavory questions that emerge from putting so much pressure on kids to meet the needs of Big Business.
Cookie Queens has gained a lot of attention for its executive producers, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who share a connection to the Girl Scouts, as well. Markle was drawn to the film because she was also a Girl Scout in a troop led by her mother and connected to one of the girls in the film.
I had a chance to spend a few minutes chatting with Alysa Nahmias about Cookie Queens. We talked about the four girls at the center of the film and how they are all larger-than-life characters who could power a documentary solo if given the chance. We also spoke about the pressure that selling Girl Scout cookies puts on them, and of course, about what Prince Harry and Meghan Markle contributed to the film as producers.
Cookie Queens is open in theaters now. Check out the interview below and my review here!
I’m happy to offer DC area readers the chance to attend a free early screening of the new sci-fi thriller Hot Spot! Starring Noomi Rapace (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), Andrzej Konopka (The Lure), and Reika Kirishima (Drive My Car), the film is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Agnieszka Smoczyńska (The Lure, The Silent Twins).
SYNOPSIS: Set in a near future society ruled by sentient A.I., a private eye investigates a murder case only to discover a rebel group capable of undermining the digital overlord. As the detective’s identity slowly unravels, his world enters a state of hypnotic meltdown.
The screening takes place on Wednesday, August 19th at 7:00pm at AMC Georgetown. If you’d like to attend, simply RSVP at the Google docs form here. Please remember, all screenings are first come first served and you’ll need to arrive early to ensure seating. Enjoy the show!
Hot Spot opens in theaters on August 21st from Focus Features.
