The Muppets are back and this time they will be featured in their first ever Halloween special!
Muppets Haunted Mansion premieres Friday, October 8, exclusively on Disney Plus. Gonzo and Pepe the Shrimp take the lead as The Great Gonzo, a world famous daredevil and with his sassy side kick. On Halloween night, the very daring Gonzo and Pepe takes on the grim challenge of spending a night in the scariest place on earth, The Haunted Mansion. Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzy, and so many more muppets will star along side Will Arnett (as The Ghost Host), Yvette Nicole Brown (The Hearse Driver), Darren Criss (The Caretaker) and Taraji P. Henson (The Bride).
Muppets Haunted Mansion will also feature appearances from John Stamos as himself along with Chrissy Metz, Alfonso Ribeiro, Edward Asner, Jeannie Mai, Danny Trejo, Sasheer Zamata, Craig Robinson, Skai Jackson, Pat Sajak, Geoff Keighley, Justina Machado, and Kim Irvine.
The film will include three new original songs: “Rest in Peace,” “Life Hereafter,” and “Tie the Knot Tango,” plus a cover of the 1970s classic, “Dancing in the Moonlight.” Mark your calendars for October 8th and get ready for a spook-tacular muppets premier that is sure to be a hauntingly good time.
Nearly 25 years after her death, the mystique surrounding Princess Diana is such that any actress who plays her gets elevated to a different status. When that actress is Kristen Stewart and the film is Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, it also comes with a lot of scrutinies whether she can pull it off. Well, the reviews out of Venice for her performance were so good that she’s seen as a likely Oscar contender for Best Actress. Maybe that will finally shut up the naysayers who still only see her as that girl from Twilight?
After a brief teaser gave us only a small taste of Stewart as Princess Diana, the new trailer for Spencer offers a lot more. The film, which I would say works in conjunction with season four of The Crown, follows a critical weekend in Diana’s life as she decides to divorce her husband, Prince Charles. In the footage, we see flashes of her glamorous, lavish royal lifestyle, but also the pain she carries from being in a loveless marriage.
Larrain is the renowned filmmaker behind No, Ema, Neruda, and another drama about a beloved political figure in the spotlight, Jackie, which earned Natalie Portman an Oscar nomination.
Spencer opens in theaters on November 5th and co-stars Jack Farthing, Olga Helsing, Thomas Douglas, Sally Hawkins, Timothy Spall, Sean Harris, Richard Sammel and, Niklas Kohrt.
May 28th, 1982. That date might not mean anything to you, but it apparently meant a lot to writer/director James DeMonaco and the people of the Staten Island neighborhood where he grew up. Because that date was the arrival of Sylvester Stallone’s Rocky III, where the Italian Stallion overcame grief and personal loss in a comeback story for the ages. For the Italian-American community in DeMonaco’s first film outside of his blockbuster The Purge franchise, Rocky is akin to a Christ-like figure, a hero of heroes, and God help anyone who dares question his manhood.
This is the Night is DeMonaco’s most personal film, a coming-of-age story that is never anything less than sincere, even as the filmmaker takes on so much that only certain aspects truly resonate. One of those is the genuine passion DeMonaco feels for Rocky III, with its release not just the centerpiece of the film but the narrative highlight and thematic guiding light. The story follows the blue-collar Dedea family, each with their own heavyweight title match with life that needs to be won. Teenaged son Anthony (Lucius Howard) lives his life in fear of what others think of him, especially the tough-guy greasers who are everywhere. He longs to tell his crush Sophia (Madelyn Cline) how he truly feels about her, but of course, is too scared…of her bullying boyfriend. Patriarch Vincent (The Purge vet Frank Grillo) runs a struggling Italian restaurant and party hall, and owes a bunch of money to mobster Frank Larroca (Bobby Cannavale), who can’t help pushing his weight around, especially when it comes to Frank’s long-suffering wife Marie (Naomi Watts). If there’s anything remotely controversial it has to do with eldest son Christian (Jonah Hauer-King), who like all of the other boys idolizes Rocky’s masculinity and machismo. But at the same time, he’s struggling with his sexual identity and desire to crossdress, a feeling that will get him ostracized by friends and surely by his father.
DeMonaco is tackling a lot, including Anthony being on the run from an entire town who thinks he called Rocky Balboa a “pussy” at the end of the film. There are many parts of This is the Night that could have made separates movies unto themselves, and they don’t get the attention they deserve here. The best sequence by far is the actual screening of it Rocky III, seen from the awed, tearful, jubilant reactions of the audience. If you’ve seen that boxing classic it will undoubtedly have more impact, but what’s cool about it is how DeMonaco frames it so it could be any movie of significance to your own childhood. His love of cinema shines through.
Appropriately enough, This is the Night gives everyone in the Dedea clan their moment to shine, emboldened by Rocky Balboa’s own battle to overcome the odds. Anthony’s is given the most screen time, but it’s Vincent, who literally slugs it out with his nemesis to earn the respect of his son and prove his worth to his wife, that is the most exciting. Christian’s story has the most emotional impact, however, as Hauer-King is superb at depicting someone struggling with who he is and how it clashes against the masculinity of his culture. As basically the only meaningful female character in the film, Watts doesn’t get much to do but be part of other males’ stories, but she’s good as the only one who understands what Christian is going through.
I don’t know if DeMonaco was given the opportunity to do This is the Night because of the millions he’s made with The Purge, but it’s clear this is a passion project. The nostalgia and personal touches run thick, and anyone who ever had to plow through the newspaper and wait in long lines outside of a movie theater to get tickets will remember that feeling. This is an indulgence and the sentimentality gets away from DeMonaco at times, but it’s a genuine, feel-good story worth experiencing for the memories it could bring up in you, too.
This is the Night is currently playing at Angelika Theaters and on digital.
There seems to be a shift as Marvel begins to explore the horror side of the MCU, and part of that could be the debut of Werewolf by Night as part of a lycan-themed holiday special. If a new rumor from CBR is true, the actor who will undergo the transformation from man to werewolf is In the Heights star, Anthony Ramos.
Take this with a grain of salt, but in the earlier story about the Werewolf-themed holiday special for Disney+ it was mentioned that a Latino actor was being sought for the lead. Ramos is about as red-hot as it gets, having also recently secured a lead role in Paramount’s new Transformers movie.
Of the two versions of Werewolf by Night in Marvel Comics, Jack Russell is the most recognizable. An adventurer with a cursed bloodline, he was able to transform into a werewolf at will. The second, and perhaps the one Marvel could be considering, is Jake Gomez, whose werewolf connection is steeped in Native American lore.
*NOTE: This review was recently part of our 2021 Toronto International Film Festival coverage. The Starling comes to Netflix on September 24th.*
“Birds are tricky,” says Jack Maynard (Chris O’Dowd) to his pregnant wife Lilly (Melissa McCarthy) early on in Theodore Melfi’s The Starling. He’s not referring to actual birds, but the painting of them on the wall of their unborn daughter Katie’s room. Of course, this line will come to have greater, more profound meaning throughout this quirky, cloying melodrama about an angry bird that changes the lives of the humans it encounters. If that statement causes a spontaneous eyeroll then you and I are on the same wavelength. While McCarthy and O’Dowd give powerful performances as a couple drowning in grief, they are waylaid at every turn by a predictable, sappy screenplay that undermines everything.
Heavy on the emotional manipulation, The Starling begins with the happy couple as they prepare for the birth of their child. Jump forward a year later and we are thumped over the head with how drastically things have changed. Lilly is practically catatonic with despair, affecting her floor manager job at a local grocery store; Jack is in a psychiatric hospital doing therapy art with Daveed Diggs. Their daughter Katie, who they had been so happily planning for, died suddenly. That’s a tough thing to bounce back from. Good thing there’s a bird with serious boundary issues. And a quirky veterinarian who happens to be a pretty good therapist for people, too. His name also happens to be Larry Fine, providing McCarthy an easy Three Stooges gag. Jokes are rare in The Starling, so take what you can get.
The territorial starling arrives to harass Lilly as she’s trying to empty out her life, getting rid of things that remind her of the pain and loss she’s experienced, and planting a garden in her yard. Heavy metaphor, much? She takes to trying all sorts of things to get rid of the annoying bird, many of them violent and at least one lethal. She takes to wearing a goofy football helmet to thwart the dive-bombing fiend. This stuff is cute, and McCarthy is good at the brief moments of physical humor they afford her. But none of it really connects you to her pain. Fluffy conversations with her small circle of clueless friends (Timothy Olyphant plays her prickly boss, Skyler Gisondo a moronic grocery clerk, Laura Harrier wasted as a cashier) feel like screenwriter Matt Harris was shrugging his way to the meatier stuff. Perhaps if Melfi had written this himself it would be different, as he’s proven capable of balancing heavy themes with a lighter touch.
And to be fair, there is definitely some hard-hitting material here, and The Starling works best when it ditches the greeting card philosophy and really digs into Lilly and Jack’s struggles. McCarthy and O’Dowd, who have worked together previously in Bridesmaids and Melfi’s comedy St. Vincent, are phenomenal comedic actors who have transitioned well into serious drama. Despite the cheesy shit surrounding them, including a feel-good soundtrack of zen pop hits, their characters are really going through something no parent should ever have to. Both actors saying more with a glance than most can with an entire sheet of dialog. McCarthy stooping to her knees to scrub away the carpet indents from her daughter’s removed crib; O’Dowd barely able to utter his daughter’s name without breaking down…these are things that hit you right in the gut.
Movies like The Starlingare all but removed from theaters now, and while that’s a shame they’ve found a home on streaming. On Netflix, which is where this is headed later in September, is the perfect place for this brand of overly sentimental mush. It’s watchable, and will charm the feathers off of some, but only because McCarthy and O’Dowd’s talent flies so high.
THE UNFORGIVABLE: SANDRA BULLOCK (PRODUCER) as RUTH SLATER. CR: KIMBERLEY FRENCH/NETFLIX
In her latest film for Netflix, Sandra Bullock isn’t keeping blindfolded as she did in Bird Box. Her character in The Unforgivable is actually looking for something: redemption.
The first image from The Unforgivable has debuted, featuring Bullock as a woman released from prison after serving time for a violent crime. But her return to society is met by people whose lives her crime impacted, and they aren’t so welcoming. A stacked cast joins Bullock including Vincent D’Onofrio, Jon Bernthal, Richard Thomas, Linda Emond, Aisling Franciosi, Rob Morgan, Emma Nelson, Will Pullen, Thomas Guiry and Viola Davis.
“My character is someone who has been incarcerated for 20 years for a pretty heinous crime [and] gets out,” Bullock told EW. “There are several people whose lives she affected by this crime she committed, and there’s a lot of hatred and anger and bitterness and sorrow associated with her release. She wants to find this one person, the only family she had when she went in, and you keep asking yourself, ‘Why can’t you let it go? This family member was traumatized by your actions — let it go! Stop harming these people all over again.'”
Behind the camera is German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt, known for her acclaimed 2019 film System Crasher. The film was co-written by Peter Craig (The Batman) and Hillary Seitz and Courtenay Miles.
The Unforgivable hits Netflix on December 10th, preceded by a select theatrical run on November 24th.
Johnny Depp can complain all he wants about cancel culture or whatever, the Fantastic Beasts franchise is moving on without him, and it will arrive sooner than expected. The third film in the Harry Potter spinoff franchise has been officially titled The Secrets of Dumbledore, and will open in theaters on April 15th 2022.
The new April date is up significantly from the July 15th 2022 it previously had. It had been originally set to open this November, but was hit by multiple delays caused first by Depp’s firing and subsequent replacement with Mads Mikkelsen as Grindelwald. Then the outbreak of COVID-19 set it back even further. Also, troubles with the screenplay by JK Rowling and Steve Kloves slowed things down.
Returning to the cast are Eddie Redmayne as Newt Scamander, along with Jude Law as a young, and apparently very secretive, Albus Dumbledore. They’ll be joined by Dan Fogler, Katherine Waterston, Alison Sudol, Dan Fogler, Jessica Williams, Ezra Miller, and Callum Turner.
I can’t begin to tell you what happened in the previous film, which was pretty damn terrible. Something about Miller’s character Credence Barebone actually being another Dumbledore brother? Eh, that shit will probably get written out this movie or something.
The last time Ben Affleck and George Clooney had a chance to collaborate, the result was 2012’s Best Picture winner, Argo. Not only was it critically acclaimed, but also a big box office hit. Times have definitely changed in the last decade. Mature dramas like that just don’t get the same big-screen treatment anymore, and that’s the kind of movie Affleck and Clooney have in The Tender Bar, which hit Amazon Prime Video this Christmas.
Directed by Clooney and starring Affleck along with Tye Sheridan, Lily Rabe, Christopher Lloyd, the film centers on a young boy who seeks a replacement for his father inside of a local pub where his uncle hangs out. The film was adapted by The Departed writer William Monahan, based on the Pulitzer Prize winning book by J. R. Moehringer.
Amazon will release The Tender Bar into NY and LA theaters on December 17th, with a wider rollout on December 22nd. It will then go to Amazon Prime Video beginning January 7th 2022.
The Tender Bar tells the story of J.R. (Sheridan), a fatherless boy growing up in the glow of a bar where the bartender, his Uncle Charlie (Affleck), is the sharpest and most colorful of an assortment of quirky and demonstrative father figures. As the boy’s determined mother (Rabe) struggles to provide her son with opportunities denied to her — and leave the dilapidated home of her outrageous if begrudgingly supportive father (Christopher Lloyd) — J.R. begins to gamely, if not always gracefully, pursue his romantic and professional dreams — with one foot persistently placed in Uncle Charlie’s bar. The Tender Bar is based on the best-selling memoir of the same name by J.R. Moehringer.
If you’re going to do an alien invasion show, especially on a streamer, then it’s necessary to tackle it from a fresh angle. That’s what Apple TV+ and creators Simon Kinberg (X-Men franchise) and David Weil (Hunters) are doing with Invasion, which examines the attack on humanity from the perspective of different characters played by Sam Neill, Golshifteh Farahani, Shamier Anderson, Firas Nassar, and Shiori Kutsuna.
As seen in the new trailer, Invasion will go across the globe to look at the alien invasion across different social classes and cultures. To me, it sounds a lot like the sci-fi version of World War Z. Appropriately, the series was shot everywhere including New York, Morocco, Japan, and more.
Here’s the synopsis: Earth is visited by an alien species that threatens humanity’s existence. Events unfold in real-time through the eyes of five ordinary people across the globe as they struggle to make sense of the chaos unraveling around them.
The first three episodes of Invasion hit Apple TV+ on October 22nd!
John Boyega has been extraordinarily picky since exiting the Star Wars galaxy, but he’s settled on his next major role. He’ll star opposite Viola Davis and Thuso Mbedu in historical epic The Woman King, directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood.
The film is inspired by true events in the Kingdom of Dahomey, a powerful state in 18th & 19th century Africa. Davis will play Nanisca, a general in the all-female fighting force. Together with her daughter Nawi (Mbedu), they fight the French and neighboring tribes that threaten to enslave them and destroy everything they’ve lived for.
“I have been enamored by John’s immense talent for years, but his speech to Black women during the protests cemented my desire to work with him,” said Prince-Bythewood. “The description of King Ghezo reads, ‘He walks as if the earth were honored by its burden.’ John possesses that innate depth and swagger, and I’m so excited to put it on screen.”
The most recent screenplay was co-written by Dana Stevens and Prince-Bythewood.
Coming up for Boyega is the sci-fi thriller They Cloned Tyrone, along with the indie drama 892. He’s also agreed to an anticipated sequel to Attack the Block. [THR]
