I have no interest in narcotics at all, but if Isabelle Huppert asked me to be part of her illegal drug ring there’s nothing in the world that could stop me. She gets to play a drug kingpin in Mama Weed, the Cesar Award-nominated film from director Jean-Paul Salomé.
Opening in select theaters next month, Mama Weed stars Huppert as a police translator who discovers that an apprehended drug dealer’s stash was never found. So what does she do? Turn it in like a good little officer of the law? Nah, she’s got bills to pay, and so makes the decision to find it for herself and take over the business.
The film marks Jean-Paul Salomé’s first since 2013’s Playing Dead.
Mama Weed opens in select theaters on July 16th and VOD a week later.
A French-Arabic translator for the Paris police anti-narcotics unit, Patience Portefeux (Isabelle Huppert) interprets the daily calls and conversations between the city’s biggest drug dealers. In the evenings, she looks in on her aging mother (Liliane Rovère, “Call My Agent”) at the long-term care facility where she is months behind in paying the bills. When she overhears the son of one of her mother’s nurses on the wiretap, Patience is moved to protect him. But her involvement in his business quickly escalates and she finds herself in possession of a huge store of hash and the insider knowledge required to move it. With her newly adopted retired police dog at her side, Patience transforms into Mama Weed, a savvy saleswoman capitalizing on her field experience to earn the extra income she so desperately needs while doing her best to stay one step ahead of her colleagues at the precinct.
Detective Benoit Blanc is back on the case! This time he’s got a mystery to solve in a much nicer location than Massachusetts.
A tweet by Rian Johnson has confirmed the start of production on Knives Out 2, with shooting to take place in Greece.
Aaaaaaaand WE’RE OFF! Day one of filming on the next Benoit Blanc mystery. Thanks to all the lovely patient people here in Greece for letting us do all this murdering on their peaceful shores. pic.twitter.com/SUFptCpl3G
For a while, it was a new casting announcement just about every day. As far as we know, Daniel Craig is the only one returning from the previous film, an unexpected smash that earned over $300M worldwide. Playing the list of suspects is an entirely new cast that includes Dave Bautista, Edward Norton, Janelle Monáe, Kathryn Hahn, Leslie Odom Jr., Kate Hudson, Madelyn Cline, and Jessica Henwick.
Knives Out 2 is the first of two sequel purchased by Netflix for a whopping $450M. They’ve yet to officially set a date for either.
Netflix is making a pretty big deal about their upcoming Fear Street trilogy, which will roll out in consecutive weeks next month. For an event of that scope, the streamer is pulling out all of the stops to keep it fresh in your mind, and so they’ve dropped another trailer, this time just for the first chapter in the R.L. Stine adaptation: Fear Street Part 1: 1994.
Starring Maya Hawke, Ashley Zuckerman, Jordana Spiro, Olivia Scott-Welch, Kiana Madeira, Benjamin Flores Jr., and more, all three films were shot over one summer by director Leigh Janiak. He broke out with the acclaimed horror Honeymoon.
Here’s the synopsis: The trilogy begins in Shadyside, 1994. In 1994, a group of teenagers discovers that the terrifying events that have haunted their town for generations may all be connected — and that they may be the next targets. Based on R.L. Stine’s best-selling horror series, the trilogy follows the nightmare through Shadyside’s sinister history.
Fear Street Part 1: 1994 hits Netflix on July 2nd, followed by Part 2: 1978 on July 9th and Part 3: 1966 on July 16th.
So he may not have been part of F9, but Dwayne Johnson has enough going on with that franchise’s most prolific writer, Chris Morgan. Not only did they team up for Hobbs & Shaw, but now they’ll reunite for Red One, a holiday action comedy set up with Amazon Studios.
So what does a holiday action-comedy starring Johnson and penned by Morgan look like? I don’t know as plot details are being kept hidden, but imagine Johnson dressed up as Santa Claus driving a rocket-fueled sleigh.
Johnson will star and produce alongside Dany Garcia and Hiram Garcia through their Seven Bucks brand. It was the latter Garcia who came up with the original story idea. Amazon is really high on this, too, for good reason. They plan to build an entire four-quadrant franchise that could span multiple platforms, especially in terms of merchandising.
“Hold my Mana, because this is exciting,” Johnson said. “Our Seven Bucks is very bullish on our partnership with Amazon Studios; underpinned with some innovation, some pioneering and a lot of positive energy and passion. I’ve been very impressed with Jen Salke and her team’s vision and ambition to create an enormous, fun and unique Red One holiday universe for families around the world to enjoy.”
Shooting on Red One begins next year in time for a holiday 2023 release. Coming up for Johnson are DC Comics film Black Adam, Disney’s Jungle Cruise, and the Netflix blockbuster Red Notice which has no relation despite the similar title.
I’ve been asking for it for years now; fans have been demanding it just as long. A movie featuring the WWE’s three biggest screen superstars Dwayne Johnson, Dave Bautista, and John Cena (sorry Miz!!) is just a no-brainer! How could it not have happened yet? Well, as much as we may all want to see a cinematic smackdown of epic proportions, it isn’t likely to happen. Why? Because Bautista doesn’t want it to.
Responding to a fan on Twitter, Bautista shot down the idea of doing a movie with his fellow WWE alums…
— Poor Kid Who Chased His Dreams. (@DaveBautista) June 24, 2021
Well, shit. He powerbombed that idea into Hell, didn’t he?
So this comes just a few days after Cena had expressed interest in possibly sharing the screen with Johnson since they are both in the Fast & Furious universe now.
To be fair, Bautista has been pretty open about his dislike of the blockbuster car franchise. Just check the emoji cannon…
— Poor Kid Who Chased His Dreams. (@DaveBautista) June 29, 2019
Anyway, Bautista is busy enough for them all. He’s got Rian Johnson’s Knives Out 2 coming up, and of course he’ll be seen next in Dune. There’s also this little thing called Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May 2023.
Last week we posted the news about the upcoming Beast Wars feature film Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, now we get to add some gravitas to the voice cast! Ron Perlman, one of the few actors to near Danny Trejo levels of film credits, will be reprising his role as Optimus Primal (whom he voiced in a previous animated series) the leader of the Maximals. I never got into Beast Wars, honestly I dropped off after the OG series ended, but I’ve found each of the live action Transformers films to have something to offer, the latest Bumblebee was a wonderfully fun surprise, so I’m in line for this. Perlman, who obviously has the voice for the job, will be joining live action actors Anthony Ramos (In the Heights, Hamilton), Dominique Fishback (Judas and the Black Messiah), and Steven Caple Jr. (Creed II) in their battle for robo-beast supremacy (I guess? Like I said, never watched the show). From what I can gather the focus of the film will see the Maximals, Predacons, and Terrorcons joining the war on Earth between Autobots and Decepticons. How this all plays into the larger timeline, or if it will even acknowledge the first three films, is yet to be seen.
Make sure to check in here for all the latest on the Transformers franchise.
Being part of Florian Zeller’s directorial debut The Father was incredibly beneficial, earning six Oscar nominations including a Best Actor win for Anthony Hopkins. With Zeller’s followup being an adaptation of his acclaimed stageplay The Son, chances are it will receive similar accolades for stars Hughe Jackman, Laura Dern, and the latest addition, Vanessa Kirby.
Variety reports Vanessa Kirby has joined Jackman and Dern in The Son cast. The story centers on a man who is enjoying life with his new wife and son, only for his ex-wife to return with their troubled teenage boy, throwing life into chaos.
The film requires three actors who will be going at one another quite a bit, which means we should expect some fiery exchanges from some incredible actors.
Kirby’s meteoric rise has been extremely fast, starting with Mission: Impossible- Fallout, then continuing in Hobbs & Shaw, Pieces of a Woman, and most recently in The World to Come.
Filming on The Son begins soon but there’s no confirmed release date.
Can you believe it? We’re at the halfway point of Lokialready, and as is usually the case, Marvel has dropped a midseason trailer to celebrate. Some of these tend to look like recaps, but this one offers something pretty interesting for the final few episodes.
The big event that we see involves the arrests of Loki (Tom Hiddleston) and Sylvie (Sophia De Martino), both variants, by the Time Variance Authority. So I guess we can assume they survive the events of Episode 3, where they are trapped on the planet Lamentis-1 as it’s set to be obliterated. We also see what looks to be a younger version of Loki, which I’m guessing will fuel some speculation that one of the results of this series is the emergence of Kid Loki.
We still haven’t seen Richard E. Grant’s character yet, or am I wrong? My guess is that he will eventually voice the Time Keepers, who may not be as benevolent as they’ve been led to be.
SYNOPSIS: Watch Loki—the imperious God of Mischief—who, after absconding with the Tesseract, is a fish-out-of-water when he lands in a world of trouble with the bureaucratic TVA (Time Variance Authority) in the brand-new trailer for Marvel Studios’ “Loki.”
New episodes of Loki debut every Wednesday on Disney+.
“Y’all wanna hear a story about why me & this bitch here fell out????????”.
Strap in and get ready for one of the wildest experiences of the year. Janicza Bravo’s Zolahad Sundance buzzing earlier this year, and I always regretted not experiencing it for myself. Because now that I have, “experience” is the right word for it. Inspired by A’Ziah “Zola” King’s epic Twitter thread from 2015, the film takes you on a nutty road trip through the seedy side of Tampa. Social media plays a major role, as it should, both stylistically and in capturing the free-for-all nature of this journey where seemingly anything can be said, anything can happen, and almost always does.
Ma Rainey breakout Taylour Paige plays King, a server who has an ill-fated encounter with Stefani (Riley Keough) at the restaurant she works at. Both women instantly bond; straight-up, there’s a certain hoodrat ratchedness to them both, and they sense it in one another. They’re also the types to go out and get what they feel they deserve, and so when Stefani invites Zola on a road trip to Floria where they’ll dance at some strip clubs, Zola jumps at the chance. She’s only known Stefani for a day, but so what? It looks like fun and there’s money to be made.
Along for the ride are Stefani’s idiot boyfriend/cuck Derek (Nicholas Braun) and, her supposed roommate X (Colman Domingo) who is…well, let’s call him unpredictable, but even that seems like too cautious of a word. The man is borderline psychopathic, with an accent that changes like the wind and a demeanor to match. It isn’t long before Zola realizes she’s been duped into some crazy shit she wasn’t prepared for. Shit goes south quick when Stefani starts selling her ass out to random dudes to make every money, with X clearly as her strongarm pimp. He also wants Zola to get in on the action, creating an unbearable tension because X is not someone to say “no” to. Making matters worse, Derek is none too happy about his girl trickin’ around.
And that ain’t even the half of it.
Zola falls squarely between two other favorite Florida films of mine; Harmony Korine’s manic, neon-lit Spring Breakers and Sean Baker’s The Florida Project. There’s unhinged behavior and hilarious sight gags (a random midget chillin’ by the pool after a denouement moment had me dying) abound, but Bravo is quick to tackle Internet culture, fame, sex, female friendship, and the plight of the underclass. What is it about our current climate that makes these people do what they’re doing? Everything revolves around Zola and Stefani’s relationship, which is constantly reorienting itself, tilting to give one power and taking it away from the other.
At every turn, Zola is forced to consider how far she’ll go to survive this shockingly dangerous predicament she’s in. There’s also how much of herself she’s willing to sacrifice, because it would be easy to just let herself go and become part of the insanity. X would certainly make it worth her while, and Stefani makes no secret that she’s looking for a sister to ride this shit out with. But is sisterhood worth compromising yourself over?
As someone who only found the initial Twitter beef after it was long over, I was curious how Bravo could capture its energy, Zola’s chaotic prose which, in 140 characters per, is Shakespearean and stripper slang rolled into one. Bravo does it with an excess of flourish, such as pinging us with the Tweet beep every so often like a reminder where this all sprang from. Characters read their tweets verbatim like that’s just how things are supposed to work, and who knows? In a few years, we may all be adding “lol” to our vocabulary. But at no point does it ever feel like a cheap gimmick.
The cast is great all around, with Paige really shining as Zola. She’s a fierce character, someone who is at turns brilliant and gullible, but always looking out for herself and observant of these weirdos around her. Keough is absolutely perfect casting, reminding of her bikini-clad entrepreneur from American Honey with a much darker, satirical twist. And props to Colman Domingo for taking a character that, not unlike James Franco’s Alien (Franco was initially attached to this film in early stages), is like a cartoon come-to-life and making him feel real. That’s what’s so scary about X, is that he’s a real person out there in the world somewhere, being cordial one minute then threatening in African to kill you the next.
Zola can’t keep up the frantic pace forever. Things wind down towards the end, and there doesn’t seem to have been any lessons for these people to have learned. But do you go to Twitter to get educated or entertained? Exactly, and Bravo knows that, too, delivering the cinematic equivalent of a tweet storm.
It was slow off the blocks, but F9 has finally opened in domestic theaters, and damn did it blow smoke in everybody else’s faces! The $70M launch stateside is the biggest since 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker. Would it have done even better without the pandemic scare that delayed the release more than a year? Of course, but maybe not by much. Universal is already staring at a $404M worldwide haul, too, considering the weeks of international markets Vin Diesel’s blockbuster franchise has been playing in. Why does anyone think Fast & Furious is shutting down? Get real.
2. A Quiet Place Part II– $6.2M/$136.3M
3. The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard– $4.87M/$25.8M
Falling 57% in week two is The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, with $4.8M. Overall, the Ryan Reynolds/Samuel L. Jackson/Salma Hayek sequel has $31M worldwide, a far cry from the $176M of its 2017 predecessor. Can’t blame everything on the pandemic, right? I think people were just fine with one movie and that’s it.
4. Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway– $4.85M/$28.8M
5. Cruella– $3.7M/$71.3M
6. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It– $2.9M/$59.1M
7. In the Heights– $2.2M/$24.1M
8. Spirit Untamed– $1M/$15.8M
9. 12 Mighty Orphans– $591K/$2.2M
10. Nobody– $560K/$26.7M
Wait, what? Hasn’t this Bob Oedinkirk actioner been out for like four months or something? What’s up with the weird 3000% boost back into the top ten? Well, Universal Pictures smartly paired Nobody up with F9 in many drive-in theaters across the country, and you can see the results. Overall, this little kick-ass flick has $61M worldwide. Not too bad.
