‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’ Trailer: It’s Tom Hardy Vs. Woody Harrelson In The Symbiote-Filled Sequel

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August 2, 2021

As far as actors go who can play insane and over-the-top characters it doesn’t get much better than Tom Hardy and Woody Harrelson. Who wouldn’t want to see these two go toe-to-toe, especially in Venom: Let There Be Carnage, the sequel to 2018’s bizarre hit film that promises to be even crazier this time around.

Andy Serkis takes over as director, obviously leaning into his experience with CGI and motion-capture performance. We get plenty of both in the buddy-comedy relationship between Eddie Brock (Hardy) and the Venom symbiote. Despite their squabbles and struggles to contain the creature’s hunger, they’ve settled into this role as the city’s lethal protector. Then comes the arrival of Cletus Kasady aka Carnage, a mass murderer who has bonded with a symbiote of his own.

Returning for the sequel are Michelle Williams and Reid Scott, along with writer Kelly Marcel. Naomie Harris joins the franchise as Shriek, who in the comics is Kasady’s lover, and Stephen Graham as Detective Mulligan who needs Venom’s help in a murder investigation.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage opens September 24th, and I think we’re all going to be looking out for connections to future Sony/Marvel films such as Morbius and Kraven the Hunter.

‘Mogul Mowgli’ Trailer: Riz Ahmed Is A Rapper Battling Illness And Facing His Own Legacy

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Travis Hopson

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August 1, 2021

Mogul Mowgli debuted at the Berlin Film Festival last year, but it’s only now that it suddenly has a ton of buzz. There’s a lot that’s happened surrounding the film since; Riz Ahmed received an Oscar nomination for his performance in the similarly-themed Sound of Metal; and director Bassam Tariq became attached to direct Marvel’s Blade movie. As if that wasn’t enough, the film also marks Ahmed’s first-time feature co-writing credit.

Once again Ahmed finds himself in the role of a musician facing a life-changing physical ailment. He plays Zed, a British-Pakistani rapper diagnosed with a degenerative autoimmune disease that threatens everything he’s ever known. Unlike Sound of Metal where Ahmed’s character needed to build himself a new life, Mogul Mowgli is about facing the past and taking stock of one’s legacy.

Ahmed is coming from a place of familiarity here, as the role allows him to lean on his own rap career. Considering the September 3rd release, we could be talking about Mogul Mowgli as possibly another Ahmed film showered with accolades.

Box Office: ‘Jungle Cruise’ Sails To $92M Combined Debut, ‘The Green Knight’ Opens Strong With $6.7M

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Travis Hopson

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August 1, 2021

Jungle Cruise (review)- $34M

Disney’s Jungle Cruise managed to stay afloat in its debut with $34M domestic, and $62M worldwide. Along with $30M in Disney+ Premier Access totals, the Dwayne Johnson/Emily Blunt action-comedy has to be considered at least a minor success, especially since the numbers are equivalent to what Johnson pulled for Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and we know how well that ended up doing.

2. The Green Knight (review)- $6.78M

Who says chivalry is dead? David Lowery’s The Green Knight, which stars Dev Patel in a surreal Arthurian epic, opened big with $6.7M. This one was tough for me to call. On the one hand, it had the look of a summer blockbuster in the King Arthur mold, but the art house crowd recognize that Lowery is going to provide something more substantial. So this might be the rare case of a film attracting both audiences, even though it is very much an indie art house effort. I think the disconnect between perception and reality explains the C+ Cinemascore from moviegoers.

3. Old– $6.76M/$30.6M

M. Night Shyamalan thriller Old fell 60% in its second weekend for $30.6M domestic. That’s just an okay number for the film which, like many, saw its rollout affected by COVID. But with a worldwide haul of $48M this is still a minor success for the $18M-budgeted film.

4. Black Widow– $6.4M/$167M

5. Stillwater (review)- $5.1M

Matt Damon and director Tom McCarthy’s Stillwater opened with just $5.1M, a disappointing number but not surprising in the least. The film, a mystery/drama with parallels to the Amanda Knox case (and largely promoted using her name) received a standing ovation at Cannes, which all but assured its dismal stateside fate. In all seriousness, the reaction to this has been mixed and I don’t think it was promoted particularly well, perhaps because the film tries to be many things all at once.

6. Space Jam: A New Legacy– $4.2M/$60.7M

7. Snake Eyes– $4M/$22.2M

8. F9: The Fast Saga– $2.6M/$168.5M

9. Escape Room: Tournament of Champions– $2.2M/$20.5M

10. The Boss Baby: Family Business– $1.3M/$53.4M

Taika Waititi’s Animated ‘Flash Gordon’ Movie Will Instead Be Live-Action

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Travis Hopson

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July 31, 2021

Taika Waititi has so many projects lined up it’s tough to keep track. A couple of years ago he even boarded a Flash Gordon reboot, the character really made famous in the 1980 film led by Sam Jones and Max von Sydow. But this wouldn’t be just another movie for Waititi, because the plan was for it to be animated. Well, that plan has changed and it will instead be live-action.

The news comes from chatty Jungle Cruise producer John Davis, who can’t stop spilling the beans on Predator 5 and a new Waterworld project. He told Collider that Waititi decided during discussions that Flash Gordon should be live-action, and Davis agreed with him…

“Taika is writing it. It was a movie that was a huge influence on him growing up. It is one of his favorite movies. He initially said to me, ‘Let’s do it animated.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ Then we got into it and started developing it and he said, ‘No, let’s do it live-action.’ I said, ‘Even better.’”

If anybody can make this work, it’s Waititi. Flash Gordon centers on the titular All-American athlete who is transported to space where he battles the evil Meng the Merciless. The sensibilities are pretty goofy, and as we’ve seen from Waititi in Thor: Ragnarok he can make the sci-fi/fantasy stuff funny as Hell. He can make anything funny, actually.

This is just one of many things Waititi has coming up, including an Akira remake, an untitled Star Wars movie, and of course, Thor: Love & Thunder. He also has the soccer comedy Next Goal Wins already shot and due to be released soon.

Review: ‘Twist’
Lena Heady And Michael Caine Star In A Needless Modern Take On Oliver Twist

By
Cortland Jacoby
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Do we need modern adaptions of classic novels? With modern reworkings of the Austen classics Persuasion and Pride & Prejudice in the works, Hollywood has to figure out how to make the source material accessible to a younger audience and still stay true to the original work. The new film Twist tries to be a relevant retelling of Charles Dicken’s Oliver Twist and fails to be the story Gen-Z is searching for.

Like his literary counterpart, this version of Oliver Twist (Rafferty Law) is still an orphan living on the streets of London, this time with a knack for parkour and art. While breaking the law, he meets two fellow petty criminals Dodge (Rita Ora) and Batesy (Franz Drameh) who leads him back to their hideout, governed by their elderly leader Fagin (Michael Caine). There he meets Nancy/Red (Sophie Simnett), who he falls head over heels for immediately and the entire group starts working a job stealing a painting from an art dealer for the crime boss Sikes (Lena Heady). Soon Oliver finds himself in over his head and questions his newfound family.

From its opening credits with shaky cam, parkour, and graffitied cast and crew’s names CGI’d on the wall, Twist feels less like an action film and more like a hokey and inauthentic retelling of Oliver Twist. The British rock revival soundtrack drowns out the dialogue and is ultimately distracting. Its script is cliché and doesn’t make sense half the time. For example, to justify his adolescent crime ring, Michael Caine says at one point to Oliver, “It’s called surviving. It’s what we do to survive.” While he might not get the roles he used to, Caine feels so much better than a try-hard remake of a Dickens novel that refuses to pack a relevant punch. The original novel was a commentary on child exploitation, while this take doesn’t feel like anything.

Like Caine, Heady deserves a better part than the one she is given. Giving the only real quality performance in the entire film, the Game Of Thrones alum easily acts circles around both the younger cast and the dreadful script. Rafferty Law (whose dad is Jude Law) is at the same time too earnest and too wooden to play an endearing Oliver Twist and the rest of Fagin’s gang play one-note archetypes that spew out exposition constantly.

If Twist is an indication of where adaptions are headed – Please Sir, I don’t want anymore.

You can catch Twist in theaters, on digital, and on demand. Watch the trailer below.

Review: ‘The Exchange’
An Entertaining Look At What A Teenage Coming Of Age Story Looks Like In The Great White North

By
John Nolan
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When I sat down to watch The Exchange I immediately went through my mental rolodex of teen coming of age comedies and realized that we haven’t really seen any lately. The 80s saw John Hughes, the 90s had the mini-wave of teen sex comedies thanks to American Pie, they were sprinkled across the 2000’s and then went dark. I hate to sound like an old guy, but is this like a YouTube effect thing? Did YouTube kill the Video Star?

As you probably guessed already The Exchange is one such coming of age film. The film follows Tim (Ed Oxenbould), an awkward social outcast living his high school years in small-town Canada circa 1985. After an especially bad day (year?) Tim decides that he’ll order his own friend via the French exchange student program and hopefully shoot up the social later by association, this incoming French import must be cool, right? Yeah, nope…not what happens. Stephane shows up looking like a bad eastern European stereotype, definitely not the high-fashion, sophisticated Frenchman he was expecting. Even still, the exotic aspect surrounding Stephane pulls the interest of townspeople and co-ed’s alike but while Stephane initially pulls some curiosity his differences from the rest of the populous quickly rise to the top igniting subtle xenophobia. As you can guess the two opposites fight their differences to come together and we all learn a lesson in the end.

I love that this flick gives us a different perspective then we’ve seen before. Feeling more Freaks and Geeks then Sixteen Candles the era feels genuine. By that I mean we don’t see the Hollywood 80s full of California Raisins and neon, but the wood paneled, somewhat dirty, and slightly depressing 80s most of us remember. The townspeople and even the town itself, feeling the recession that defined most of the decade, is colored with an undercurrent of melancholy that full establishes the tone of the people. This is why Stephane worked so well for me, he comes in as the total opposite of his surroundings. Brightly colored, full of energy and without shame. Some might call it obvious, and maybe it was but Avan Jogia plays the character with enough heart and charisma to make the annoying, surprisingly endearing. Ed Oxenbould ends up as a perfect cloud to Jogia’s sunshine. The scenes where Tim’s jealousy is on 11 are really where he shines, showing the character as both envious and angry at his own envy….portraying a “Why do they like this? Why do I like this?” feeling that’s hard to nail down.

The Exchange isn’t going to find itself on any lists of top 10 teen movies, sure it’s formulaic and at times obvious, but it does it’s job and it does it well. The fish out of water scenes upon Stephane’s arrival brought out more then a few giggles but the real draw ends up being the heart that director Dan Mazer finds in the second half of the film. The unfortunate truth that the shared feeling of being hated by others can bring people together, and that racism isn’t unique to America but is rather a world wide problem both hit hard. In the end it’s the chemistry between Tim and Stefane and the friendship that emerges that will make your time with The Exchange worth it.

Bonus notes I couldn’t find a place to include above. The film is based on writer Tim Long’s own experiences with an exchange student in high school. For those fans of either Smallville or This Is Us will be delighted to find a surprisingly unrecognizable Justin Hartley in a really fun role as the school’s soccer coach. It’s amazing what brown hair and a mustache can do to change a persons look.

The Exchange is available now on VOD

The Exchange
Directed by: Dan Mazer
Written by: Tim Long
Starring: Ed Oxenbould, Avan Jogia, Justin Hartley, Jennifer Irwin and Paul Braunstein

Tom Hanks To Star In A Wes Anderson Movie For The First Time

By

Travis Hopson

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July 30, 2021

We’re so accustomed to Wes Anderson working with the same cast in every movie that when somebody new joins it’s a pretty big deal. And’s especially true in this case because Anderson will be directing arguably the most beloved actor in the world, Tom Hanks, for the very first time.

According to THR, Hanks has joined Anderson’s The French Dispatch follow-up that will be set in Spain. It’s unclear how big Hanks’ role will be, but it could be as small as a cameo, which would be disappointing. That said, once Anderson has your number he tends to call frequently.

Hanks joins Bill Murray and Tilda Swinton, a couple of Anderson regulars who are also in The French Dispatch which opens on October 22nd. This will be Hanks’ first film since News of the World, which earned him great critical acclaim. He’ll be seen next in the Apple TV+ sci-fi series Finch later this year.

Fans Screaming For Amber Heard’s Removal From ‘Aquaman 2’ Are Being Ignored By Producers

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Travis Hopson

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July 30, 2021

If you’re one of those losers who wastes their time on social media crying for Amber Heard to be kicked off Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, I’ve got some bad news for you. The film’s producers really don’t care and aren’t listening.

A vocal minority of fans have been in an uproar ever since Heard was confirmed to be reprising her role as Mera in the superhero sequel. They feel that because her ex-husband Johnny Depp was kicked off Fantastic Beasts 3 because of the abuse allegations against him, she should have the same done to her because…equality? I don’t know. The whole thing is stupid.

Aquaman producer Peter Safran tells Deadline that even though he and Warner Bros. are well aware of what some are saying out there about Heard, they never considered removing her from the film…

“I don’t think we’re ever going to react to, honestly, pure fan pressure. You gotta do what’s best for the movie. We felt that if it’s James Wan, and Jason Momoa, it should be Amber Heard. That’s really what it was.”

“One is not unaware of what is going on in the Twitter-verse, but that doesn’t mean you have to react to it or take it as gospel or accede to their wishes,” Safran continued. “You have to do what’s right for the film, and that’s really where we landed on it.”

Amber Heard’s job has never even appeared to be in danger. The actress hasn’t been shy about rubbing that in the faces of her detractors, either. Good for her. Personally, I hope they double her screen time just to piss these folks off.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom opens December 16th 2022 and is shooting now.

Review: ‘Nine Days’
Winston Duke And Zazie Beetz Explore The Great Beyond In Edson Oda's Masterfully Philosophical Debut Feature

By
Cortland Jacoby
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When we first meet Will in his spectacled and suspendered glory, he is sitting alone in a house in the middle of the desert, watching numerous television sets. He doesn’t say much at first, just recording and taking notes on what seems to be people’s everyday lives. The scene should feel boring and mundane but in writer/director Edson Oda’s hands, Nine Days’ opening scene feels mesmerizing.

We come to find out Will (Winston Duke) is a higher being tasked with picking the next person to be born. He gives them temporary names and guides them through a series of real-world scenarios that will eventually get him to the right candidate in nine days’ time. While he tells the likes of Bill Skargård’s Kane and Tony Hale’s Alexander that there are no wrong answers, there clearly are standards Will is forming in his own mind, set by a previous soul. It’s Zazie Beetz’s brilliant portrayal of Emma thats test his ability to carry out his mission, making him question his own purpose. While the concept is deeply rooted in the sci-fi genre, Nine Days feels like a moving character study entrenched in the sights and sounds of what makes life worthwhile.

The first feature effort from Japanese-Brazilian Oda was incubated in the Sundance Screenwriters Lab and was welcomed at the 2020 pre-COVID version of the festival. It’s easy to see why. Oda’s script is very tight and his direction allows scenes to breathe and bask in very specific visuals and sounds. The pacing will feel slow to some, but the philosophical momentum built from Oda’s careful direction gently guides you from scene to scene. He takes advantage of both the vast Salt Plains shooting location and the more winding and cluttered cabin. While it’s hard not to stare and be moved by such a stark landscape, Will’s home feels more like the backstage area of a theater, complete with a carpenter shop and prop room. It’s a testament that everything we see from Oda is well -thought out and calculated.

This includes casting. Nine Days has one of the most cohesive ensembles we’ve seen in years. Duke’s performance is masterful, capturing Will’s idiosyncrasies and bringing a human quality to a god-like line manager. Benedict Wong plays Kyo, a old spirit stuck in purgatory that was never born and helps make soul-decisions on occasion. He serves as both comic relief and the role of the annoying neighbor kid from next door that tags along all the time. It’s that wise naivety Wong captures that earned him an Independent Spirit nomination last year.

Eventually, Will narrows it down to two possible contestants, one slightly too sensitive and curious and one pragmatic and logical. Each of the “lost” souls gets to live one life experience, such as walking on the beach or riding a bike, before they fade away. As Oda makes us question what it takes to survive in this world, he reminds us that life is only worth living through our experiences with others. It’s powerful filmmaking from a first-timer.

You can watch Nine Days now in New York and Los Angeles theaters. Opens up nationwide August 6th. Watch the trailer below and find our interviews with the cast here.

‘Waterworld’ Series In The Works From ‘Predator 5′ And ’10 Cloverfield Lane’ Director

By

Travis Hopson

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July 30, 2021

Lookup any list of the biggest, most embarrassing flops and Waterworld is sure to be near the top. The $170M post-apocalyptic film starred Kevin Costner in a world where the polar ice caps melted, flooding the entire planet. But the only thing that sunk was the film’s box office, making it a punchline and Costner’s most humiliating failure…well, at least until The Postman was released. Nobody has come near the property since then, but producer John Davis is ready to change that.

Speaking with Collider, Davis, who is also behind Disney’s Jungle Cruise and Dan Trachtenberg’s secretive Predator 5 movie, is developing a Waterworld series for streaming. Not only that, but it will be set 20 years after its predecessor and have Trachtenberg directing.

It’s unclear where the series would land, however. For something the scope of Waterworld, you’d probably expect Amazon or Netflix to throw the most cash at it. But then again, it’s Waterworld, and the track record ain’t great. Anybody who has heard of it now is only due to the bad reputation, not because of fondness or desire to see it return.