Kevin Hart isn’t an action star, but he keeps creeping his way towards becoming one. Typically, he does it through comedy in such films as Ride Along, The Man from Toronto, his parody series Die Hart, and cameo in Hobbs & Shaw. But Hart comes closest to reaching the destination in Lift, another of those bloated, big budget, entertaining star-driven spectacles that Netflix loves so much and that audiences will quickly forget, like Red Notice and The Gray Man before it.
If Now You See Me wasn’t itself a heist movie, then I’d say Lift was the Now You See Me of heist movies. Utterly consumed by its star power and the gimmick-driven plot, the film stars Hart as Cyrus, leader of a ragtag group of elite thieves, each with their own special skill. The cast is full of actors firmly settled under the Netflix umbrella. There’s Vincent D’Onofrio as Denton, a master of disguises with multiple personalities to match; Billy Magnussen as Magnus, the team’s wild card safecracker; Ursula Corbero as Camila, the team’s resident wheelwoman/pilot; and a handful of others willing to take big risks for the big score.
We meet the crew as they’re pulling off a Venice auction house theft of an NFT; and no it’s not one of those special Donald Trump brand NFTs. This is from N8 (Jacob Batalon), a mysterious Banksy-esque digital artist whose work sells in the millions. It doesn’t totally go off without a hitch. They’re spotted by dogged Interpol agent Abby (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), who shares a brief romantic past with Cyrus. A wild boat chase ensues, but the team is dead to rights. They’re afforded one chance at freedom, and it’s to pull off a near-impossible job. Steal $500M in gold from a terrorist (Jean Reno) who is having it transported in a vault at 40,000 feet aboard an airplane.
The plot is ridiculous, and to screenwriter Daniel Kunka’s credit, the solution is just as absurd. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that Lift is the most enjoyable of Netflix’s globe-hopping genre films. They all sport a familiar pattern; lots of exotic locales, and visually appealing international stars who are hard to look away from. When the gang gets together, they bounce jokes off of each other rapid fire, displaying their single character trait easily. You won’t find much to separate Lift from a raft of other “cool” heist movies, but you’ll have a good time with it nonetheless.
It’s been five years since F. Gary Gray directed The Fate of the Furious, twenty years since his remake of The Italian Job, and twenty-seven years since his debut, Set It Off. You could say that Lift is almost an amalgam of all three. Gray isn’t the most exciting filmmaker around, but he’s better at capturing the chase than he’s given credit for, and moves the action at a breezy pace while affording his stars the spotlight they deserve. As such, Hart stands head and shoulders above, even in a packed ensemble such as this. Dropping fewer punchlines than I think he ever has before, Hart is the steady center of Lift‘s ridiculous high-flying robbery plot, and helps it to stick the landing.
Another day, more casting for season two of The Last of Us. It’s clear that things are ramping up quickly now, and the latest to join the growing cast is Isabela Merced, taking on the role of Dina.
Merced has been one of the best young actresses rising up through the Hollywood ranks, thanks to her roles in Sicario 2, Dora and the Lost City of Gold, and Father of the Bride. She’ll play the Marvel hero Araña in the upcoming Madame Web movie with Dakota Johnson.
So who is Dina? In The Last of Us Part II video game, she is the ex-girlfriend of Jesse, recently cast with Beef actor Young Mazino, and the eventual love interest of Ellie, played once again by Bella Ramsey. In the game, Dina is another, along with Jesse, who joins Ellie on a very personal mission. Also recently cast was Kaitlyn Dever in the critical role of Abby. Pedro Pascal is set to return as Joel.
The film is a reunion between Merced and Dever who starred together in the Romeo & Juliet reimagining, Rosaline.
“Dina is warm, brilliant, wild, funny, moral, dangerous and instantly lovable,” said Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann, The Last of Us‘ co-creators, writers, executive producers and directors. “You can search forever for an actor who effortlessly embodies all of those things, or you can find Isabela Merced right away. We couldn’t be prouder to have her join our family.”
It looks as if The Last of Us season two will begin production soon, and we can probably expect to see it hit HBO in 2025. [Deadline]
Almost twenty years ago, Tina Fey, Lorne Michaels, and Paramount released the seminal high-school comedy Mean Girls. It brought us iconic lines like “You go Glen Coco,” “She doesn’t even go here,” and “On Wednesdays we wear Pink.” Ten years later after its initial release, Tina Fey, her husband composer Jeff Richmond, and lyricist Neil Benjamin announced that a Broadway musical version was in the works. After a successful run, the Plastics are returning to the silver screen, this time in song.
For those who don’t know or are die-hard fans of the film, the story of 2024 version follows very closely to the original film. High-school student, Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), moves from her home in Africa to a Chicago suburb when her mother (Jenna Fischer) gets a job at Northwestern. Unaccustomed to school life she struggles to fit into an American high school and falls back on two outcasts in her class, Janis ‘Imi’ike (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian Hubbard (Jaquel Spivey).
They introduce her to the Plastics, the clique top of the social hierarchy, consisting of queen bee Regina George (Renee Rapp), lackie and gossip Gretchen Weiners (Bebe Wood), and hot weirdo Karen Shetty (Avantika). After they offer Cady an open lunch invitation, Janis eventually convinces her to sabotage the group from within leading to disastrous physical and emotional consequences.
Your mileage may vary with this version of Mean Girls. Going in not knowing the original film (but how could you not?) or with some familiarity with the staged version is probably the safest bet. The orchestrations are stipped away slightly from the musical, so some fans may have issues with that. But for those whose only touchstone to this world is the beloved Lindsay Lohan version, this attempt may fall short.
Carrying the vocals and story along are Auli’i Cravalho and Jaquel Spivey. Both give heartfelt performances. The latter’s version of Damian is on par with his predecessor, which is an issue with this film. I wanted more screen time for both of them. Renee Rapp’s voice carries this very beautiful but sinister tenor to it but there’s an aloofness about her Regina that doesn’t quite work here.
Tina Fey and Tim Meadows return to their roles as math teacher and principal respectively, and both still knock it out of the park for the little time they are onscreen. Comedian Connor Ratliff, Ashley Park (who played Gretchen on Broadway), and Jon Hamm pop up as critically underused teachers.
The musical version needs the bite and sharp wit of the original. The lyrics lack the insightfulness and depth that Lohan’s voice-over provided. In Janis’ triumphant song “I’d Rather Be Me,” she sings “I won’t twist in knots to join your game/ I will say, ‘You make me mad. And if you treat me bad/ I’ll say ‘You’re bad.’” Besides rhyming ‘bad’ with itself, it doesn’t have the same impact that the speech Lizzie Caplan delivers before diving off the table in the 2004 version. There’s no humor and gall to it. Its hollow.
Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.’s visuals are hit or miss. There’s a brilliant black-and-white French film nod during the Christmas talent show that made me laugh hard. However, how they handle the transitions into song feels jarring. The choreography feels very forced and sometimes tonally out of place. The updating of material from 2004 for a Gen Z audience doesn’t always hit. They rely heavily on the TikTok format, something I’m sure won’t age well in five years.
Musicals can be known for their earnestness which can hurt a film about the bitchiness and cruelty of growing up. I still don’t know if Mean Girls was the best source material to adapt into a musical and this cinematic version proves it.
Mean Girls hits theaters Friday. Watch the trailer below.
More actors are making the jump to filmmaking than ever before. The next to do so is The Last Airbender and Transformers: Age of Extinction actress, Nicole Peltz Beckham. And I’m sure that her hope for the gritty drama Lola is that it receives better reviews than either of the two movies I just mentioned.
Peltz does more than direct Lola; she also wrote the screenplay, produced, and starred as the titular Lola James. The story centers on the 19-year-old woman living in Midwest, who is scrounging up enough money to get her nine-year-old brother Arlo away from their abusive mother. The new trailer shows what a struggle this will be, as tragedy and an unexpected pregnancy upend her plans.
Also in the cast are Luke David Blumm, Virginia Madsen, Richie Merritt, Trevor Long, and Raven Goodwin.
This hardly looks like the kind of film one would expect from Peltz, who is married into the family of David and Victoria Beckham. But it’s also good to see her branching out into something new that could take her career even further.
Lola opens in theaters and VOD on February 9th. Here’s the synopsis followed by the trailer:
Set in 2002 Middle America, Lola revolves around nineteen-year-old Lola James (Peltz Beckham), who is desperately working to save enough money to get her little brother, Arlo (Luke David Blumm), out of their toxic home dominated by their mother, Mona (Madsen). All Lola wants is for Arlo to have a chance at the life she never had nor will. One tragic night, her whole world gets uprooted, and from that moment on, nothing will ever be the same.
For years I was super excited for them to make a Halo TV series or movie. It’s one of my favorite video game franchises ever, the Master Chief is hella cool, and the story is just made to be adapted into something bigger. Then it finally happened, on Paramount+, and two years later I still haven’t watched it. Forgot all about it. So color me shocked to be reminded of its existence by a trailer for season two, which arrives next month.
Pablo Schreiber returns as Master Chief, who is trying to convince people of the full extent of the Covenant threat to attack humanity where it least expects.
Schreiber is joined in the Halo cast by Natasha McElhone, Jen Taylor, Bokeem Woodbine, Shabana Azmi, Natasha Culzac, Olive Gray, Yerin Ha, Bentley Kalu, Kate Kennedy, Charlie Murphy, Danny Sapani, Joseph Morgan, Cristina Rodlo, and Christina Bennington, with Fiona O’Shaugnessy and Tylan Bailey as new series regulars.
Here’s the synopsis: In season two, Master Chief John-117 (Pablo Schreiber) leads his team of elite Spartans against the alien threat known as the Covenant. In the wake of a shocking event on a desolate planet, John cannot shake the feeling that his war is about to change and risks everything to prove what no one else will believe – that the Covenant is preparing to attack humanity’s greatest stronghold. With the galaxy on the brink, John embarks on a journey to find the key to humankind’s salvation, or its extinction: the Halo.
Steven Spielberg remains aboard as exec-producer, with Dave Wiener as showrunner and producer.
TheScream 7 drama is probably not over yet, but the directing team of Radio Silence, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, have at least one more chance to work with star Melissa Barrera in a horror movie. And this one might be the start of a franchise rather than another sequel. The title for their mysterious untitled horror has been revealed as Abigail, and while we knew it was inspired by a classic monster movie, we couldn’t have predicted how wild it would actually turn out to be.
As seen in the new trailer for Abigail, the film is a vampire movie about a group of criminals who discover that one of the girls they have kidnapped is far more dangerous than they ever could’ve known. Before long, it becomes clear that the kidnappers are the true captives here.
Joining Barrera in the cast are Alisha Weir, Dan Stevens, Kevin Durand, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Giancarlo Esposito, and the late Euphoria actor Angus Cloud.
So that classic monster movie it was inspired by? That would be 1936 horror Dracula’s Daughter which influenced screenwriters Stephen Shields and Guy Busick.
Here’s the official synopsis: After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.
Abigail opens in theaters on April 19th, so we don’t have to wait long!
THE BEEKEEPER: I haven't forgotten you, Jason Statham! This was a January treat, a violent bit of wish fulfillment that saw Statham slaughter scammers and terrorize Josh Hutcherson with brutal efficency.
Move over, John Wick! The Beekeeper is here!
Nobody does occupational violence quite like Jason Statham. The Transporter, The Mechanic, and now The Beekeeper! This movie is goddamned insane, by far the craziest thing Statham has ever done. And I’ve seen both Crank movies where he was sticking jumper cables to his tongue. But that’s nothing compared to what he and director David Ayer, who has been at the helm of some wild shit himself (Suicide Squad, Bright), have cooked up. This is B-movie, gory wish fulfillment at its finest, and you are guaranteed to leave satisfied.
When I was trying to convince a friend of mine to go see The Beekeeper with me, she surmised the plot to be that “Statham is a guy who is a beekeeper but is really a kick-ass killer or something.” Well, she’s pretty much right on the nose. But she misses SO MANY of the details that make this movie awesome. Statham plays Adam Clay, a name that already sounds like it belongs to someone with some shit to hide, and he tends bees on isolated land owned by Eloise, played by the great Claire Huxtable…er, Phylicia Rashad. She takes care of him, and invites Clay to dinner, but y’know, he’s a man of mystery so he doesn’t say much. Have a nice laugh as we watch Statham tend to his hive of bees, canning dozens of jars of honey…for what, exactly? Does he use them to blackmail Winnie the Pooh? Whatever, before he can arrive at the dinner table, Eloise does the thing we all dread our grandparents doing. She falls for a phishing scam. With every excruciating moment that passes, we cringe as she presses the keys and answers the shady telemarketer’s questions that will doom her. All of Eloise’s accounts are drained, including a $2M charity she was overseeing. Her life’s saving and life’s work taken from her in moments, Eloise commits suicide.
Adam Clay ain’t having that shit.
When I say this movie is like “wish fulfillment”, I mean it. The only thing we hate more than phishing scams and telemarketers are white, rich, entitled pricks who cash in by taking advantage of older people. Well, they get their vicious comeuppance when Clay, who was once part of an elite black ops agency known as The Beekeepers, finds the address of the people who scammed Eloise. It seems the Beekeepers exist to protect society from corruption and to destroy those who are untouchable from our laws. In Clay’s idea of justice, he waltzes right past the security guards and into the call center, carrying two large gas cans. He then proceeds to humiliate and brutally attack the douchebag ringmaster of this operation, and burn the whole damn place down.
The Beekeeper is utterly ridiculous and excessive in just about every way, and that’s why it’s so damn good. We learn next to nothing about this secretive organization that Clay was a part of, but they are apparently so top-level that ex-CIA boss Wallace Westwyld (Jeremy Irons, looking kinda befuddled to be there) barely knows of their existence. But he knows enough to tell his dickhead tech-billionaire employer Derek Danforth (Josh Hutcherson), who happens to be the entitled kid of the President of the United States, that he’s as good as dead for ripping off all of those geezers and pissing off a Beekeeper. What are the Beekeepers exactly? The film suggests a long mythology where the title is passed down from agent to agent, with an almost Highlander-esque “there can be only one” code.
Later, we see Adam square off in an insane showdown with the current Beekeeper, Anisette, played by Megan Lee with crazy hair, high heels, and a pink trench. Oh, and a massive gatling gun on the back of her vehicle, which she proceeds to unload AT A GAS STATION ignoring all of the innocents and, y’know, the potential for massive explosive destruction. Are the Beekeepers so out-of-reach that they essentially undermine their own principles? These questions aren’t answered at all, and frankly, I didn’t really want them to be. Ayer and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer maximize the fun and not the details.
The Beekeeper is another movie that exists in response to John Wick. While the over-caffeinated guy sitting behind me kept shouting “He’s the next John Wick!!!”, this movie is nothing like what Keanu is doing over there. How could it be? Statham doesn’t do what Keanu does. The action isn’t slick or poetic at all, but it can be hilariously clever, like when Clay hogties a scammer to a truck then sends the vehicle hurtling into the water; the poor guy dragged behind like a parachute. Waves of goons, including Lazarus (Taylor James), an oversized South African who claims to have killed a Beekeeper (barely, hence his metal leg), show up for Clay to murderize with ease. Statham is one of those actors who, despite his gritty street-level looks and attitude, is fiercely protective of his on-screen reputation. Clay doesn’t take a lot of damage and is basically a superhero mowing down a bunch of normals. That’s fine, too, when you’re talking about a movie where the bad guys are so universally loathsome and you just want to see them get what they deserve.
Other characters orbit the Beekeeper but they don’t hold a ton of interest except for the high quality of actors playing them. Emmy Raver-Lampman plays Eloise’s daughter, an FBI agent who in any other movie would go on the bloodthirsty rampage of vengeance that Clay embarks on. Instead, she sorta waffles between wanting to see Clay dish out punishment, and to see these guys actually face justice. Instead, she becomes the typical one-step-behind cop who does nothing. Minnie Driver as the current FBI honcho talks a lot on the phone but doesn’t do a lot. She gets the menial task of ordering up more losers for Clay to beat up.
One of the best, and silliest, components of The Beekeeper is its fascination with actual bee culture. Clay sees himself as a protector of the hive, but that doesn’t apply to the Queen, who in this case would be the current President. Instead, Clay regards himself as a “queenslayer”, which is a bee that will kill the queen if she has defective offspring. Let’s see…a mother who lets her son exploit this country’s most vulnerable citizens? Of all the ways for the first female President to see her administration ruined, being the target of a beekeeper with a bug fetish couldn’t have been on anyone’s list. But that’s part of why this movie is so damned amazing. It doesn’t always make sense, but by the time you’ve watched Jason Statham kick over the hornet’s nest, you’ll leave the theater buzzing to see him do it again.
Danny Boyle and Alex Garland had a pretty good run of movies in the 2000s, beginning when the director adapted Garland’s book, The Beach, into a cult favorite Leonardo DiCaprio movie. That followed with Boyle directing Garland’s screenplays for 28 Days Later, followed by 2007’s underrated sci-fi film, Sunshine. A sequel to 28 Days Later, titled 28 Weeks Later, arrived that same year but Boyle had moved on, and the partnership never got back together. They had beef for a while but eventually made up.
There has been years of talk about a sequel to 28 Weeks Later that would reunite Boyle and Garland, and now it’s finally happening. THR reports that a new sequel, titled 28 Years Later, is being pitched as a potential trilogy to studios and streamers. Boyle will direct the first movie, with Garland aboard to write all three. Sounds like we could see Boyle move to a producer role for any follow-up films, as he did with 28 Weeks Later. The budget for each film is expected to be around $75M.
Opening in 2002, 28 Days Later was a breakout film for Cillian Murphy, but also featured Naomie Harris, and Brendan Gleeson. It’s set in London after the fallout of a viral infection, the “rage virus”, that transforms people into fast-moving predators. The film was credited with resurrecting the zombie genre, even though it isn’t technically a zombie movie.
Boyle’s most recent film was pre-pandemic, 2019’s Beatles-inspired comedy, Yesterday. Garland has branched out into his own directing career with Ex Machina, Annihilation, Men, and this year’s thriller, Civil War. He has said
Expect a major studio to scoop 28 Years Later up quickly. Fans have been clamoring to see this franchise reborn, myself included, and if they can somehow get Cillian Murphy back…
The streaming era has been very good to Star Trek. On Paramount+, the franchise has grown by leaps and bounds with multiple shows earning high marks from fans. However, there hasn’t been a big-screen movie since 2016’s Star Trek Beyond, and it performed so poorly any sequels have been in limbo ever since. Well, that’s about to change. For real, this time.
So while this isn’t the long-developing, embarrassing-at-this-point Star Trek 4, Deadline confirms that a new film expanding on the reboot universe created by JJ Abrams is in the works. The film will be a prequel origin story set decades before the 2009 Star Trek led by Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana. Abrams’ Bad Robot Production will produce.
Behind the camera will be Andor director, Toby Haynes, with Seth Grahame-Smith (Dark Shadows, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter) writing the screenplay.
As for that fourth movie with Pine and the crew, it’s supposedly still in the works and expected to be the final chapter. You might recall that Paramount has announced it many different times, but whether it was due to the cast not being signed, or Quentin Tarantino riding in with a movie of his own, or whatever, the project never got off the ground and everyone looked kinda silly for it.
The question is whether Trek fans, conditioned to get their fix in multiple successful streaming shows, will support a theatrical movie disconnected from them.
Sorry, Sasha Calle fans. While there was a groundswell of support for the actress to carry on as Supergirl following her impressive debut in The Flash, that doesn’t appear to be happening. James Gunn has his own plans for the DCU, and the upcoming Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow movie. And now we’re seeing some of those plans take shape as a handful of actresses vying for the role of the Kryptonian.
According to Deadline, House of the Dragon breakout Milly Alcock, CODA star Emilia Jones, and The Winchesters actress Meg Donnelly are testing to play Supergirl. It could be that Donnelly has a leg up on her competitors, as she already voices Supergirl in the animated movies Legion of Super-Heroes and Justice League: Crisis On Infinite Earths.
While there is a writer, Ana Nogueira, there’s no director attached to the film yet. It’s Gunn who is deeply involved in the casting right now, which suggests we could see Supergirl in his Superman: Legacy movie coming in 2025. Maybe in a post-credits tag?
There are five movies that are part of DC Studios’ opening chapter, titled “Gods and Monsters”. Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow is going to be a key cog, and whoever lands that role is going to be very busy for a long time.
