Chances are you’ve read or even heard me sing the praises of Vinessa Shaw more than once. Known primarily for her performances in Two Lovers, 3:10 to Yuma, and Hocus Pocus, Shaw turns her attention to uplifting sports drama with 12 Mighty Orphans, which is based on a remarkable true story practically tailor-made for the movies.
Shaw plays Juanita Russell, wife to Texas football coach Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson), who has taken a job teaching the Mighty Mites, a team of orphan boys at the Masonic Home and School of Texas. The Depression-era tale is one of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps and becoming a man in the face of adversity, set in a time when America was desperate for a hopeful underdog story to pull them through the tough times. Juanita’s role in the team’s unlikely championship glory is crucial, helping to educate and prepare them for a tough future, while also keeping Rusty grounded in his cause.
I was fortunate enough to speak with Vinessa Shaw about 12 Mighty Orphans, the unexpected request that drew her to the role, and any parallels to her debut role in the 1992 sports comedy Ladybugs starring Rodney Dangerfield.
You can check out my interview with Shaw below, and my review of 12 Mighty Orphanshere. The film is available in select theaters now and will expand further beginning June 18th.
When Apple TV+ made their big launch in 2019, one of the crown jewel projects they had ready to go was The Morning Show. Leaning heavily on the star power of Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston, and Steve Carell, it was one of the early series that gave the fledgling streamer some awards cred, earning multiple Emmy nominations and a win for co-star Billy Crudup. And now it’s coming back for season two.
The new teaser for The Morning Show season two reveals a September 17th return date, and also offers a look at Julianna Margulies as news icon and UBA’s latest anchor Laura Peterson. This season seems to center around Alex (Aniston) and her decision to quit the network after she and Bradley (Witherspoon) publicly exposed a toxic work environment. We also see ex-The Daily Show and Patriot Act comedian Hasan Minhaj, who joins the cast as Alex’s replacement Eric Nomani.
Surprisingly, Carell returns as disgraced and recently-fired anchor Mitch Kessler, suggesting that his story is far from over.
This week on Cinema Royale we are partying in the streets of NYC with Lin Manuel Miranda’s love letter to Washington Heights, In the Heights. Then Travis and John just get more confused trying to understand the plot of Paraount+’s Antoine Fuqua/Mark Whalberg action flick, Infinite. To round out the reviews the guys try to figure out what a movie needs to be to qualify as good as Travis uses his ‘Burrito’ analogy to review The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.
Plus our thoughts on the Masters of the Universe: Revelation trailer, new She-Hulk casting, Liam Neeson returning as Qui-Gon Jinn, and a possible Kingpin sequel!
All of this and more!
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Texas is littered with literally hundreds of triumphant underdog football stories so amazing it’s like they were made to be movies. When your state lives, breathes and eats the sport, it’s easy to make the simple act of winning a game appear historic, or the stuff of legend. The story of the Mighty Mites is, perhaps, the most incredible and 12 Mighty Orphans embraces the amazing aspects but also the real-life significance that football had on poor Americans grappling with the Great Depression.
It’s been said millions of times before by people smarter and more eloquent than me, that sports are a microcosm of life. That’s one reason why sports movies are so endearing and so reliably crowd-pleasing. Ty Roberts’ 12 Mighty Orphans is wrapped in American myth-making, of a time when poor people could put their hopes and dreams in the uphill climb of one under-privileged team or orphans. If they could become champions, then all of them could thrive in a better tomorrow.
The story, as captured in Jim Dent’s nonfiction novel, is rather remarkable. The dirt-poor orphans of the Masonic Home and School of Texas couldn’t even afford to have shoes on their feet, but their orphanage still had a football squad. That team would come to be led by former football star and war hero Rusty Russell (Luke Wilson), who moves his family, including his teacher-wife Juanita (Vinessa Shaw) there to help turn a group of rowdy boys into responsible young men, and more importantly, a winning football team. That an orphanage barely able to feed its charges should have a sports team doesn’t even factor as ridiculous; this is Texas after all: God, Country, and Football could be the state motto.
Frequent flashbacks fill in the details of Russell’s backstory and clue us into his outlook. An orphan himself who managed to pull himself up by his bootstraps, working at the orphanage is his way of paying back for all that the country did for him. These recollections also take us to his fighting on the battlefield, cut with the action on the gridiron because, y’know, football is war. It’s a crass, ill-advised sentiment that is hammered home too often, but it gives us an idea of who Russell is whether we agree with it or not.
The boys face mistreatment, disregard, and abuse on and off the football field. They are constantly challenged as illegitimate by the school board and elitist rival coaches. Wayne Knight plays a corrupt member of the staff who both physically abuses the boys and leeches off of the free labor they’re forced to provide as wards of the state. Is there any wonder some of the players, such as team superstar and rabble-rouser Hardy Brown (Jake Austin Walker), see their situation as hopeless? There’s something Biblical (religion plays a role, of course) about his turn from the darkness and into the light, with the aid of a Russell as his savior.
It’s all quite heavy-handed, but functionally entertaining as well. In particular, there’s a lot of fun to be had in the relationship between Russell and Doc Hall (Martin Sheen), a jovial, spirited alcoholic whose general optimism cuts through the grimness of the boys’ individual demons. Texas native Roberts is more comfortable capturing the on-field action, which has genuine moments of tension and struggle. The title isn’t a misnomer; they are literally a team of 12 and are forced to play both offense and defense. The threat of injury looms large because losing any player could be the end of everything. They face teams that outweigh them by 50 pounds and have real equipment; the Mighty Mites, on the other hand, use a makeshift football filled with baking flour.
Off the field, Roberts puts too much focus on Russell when it’s the orphans’ journey that we see capture the heart of a country, including President Roosevelt who couldn’t get enough of their story. 12 Mighty Orphans doesn’t dig especially deep into the class divisions and economic strife that made the Mighty Mites such a necessary beacon of hope, but it just crosses the goal line for those who want some feel-good with their field goals.
12 Mighty Orphans is in select theaters now, expands beginning June 18th.
In its third week, A Quiet Place Part II fended off the challenge of In the Heights and crossed the $100M mark. Worldwide the film has amassed $185M in total.
This one hurts my soul a little bit. Despite the rave reviews, tons of marketing including a run of celebrity endorsements only rivaled by Presidential election campaigns, In the Heights opened with just $11.4M. There will be others who are going to dissect the reasons for this disappointing debut, but I chalk it up to one thing. WB’s decision to open it in theaters and HBO Max hurt it, and they never made the case for it to be seen outside of streaming. It was easy to make that claim with blockbusters Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat, but a street level musical with no A-list stars is a different story. This result isn’t really a shock, though, as frustrating as it is.
3. Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway– $10.4M
Sony’s Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway stole away with $10.4M, far less than the $25M start of the prior film in 2018. That one somehow managed to earn $350M globally, launching what Sony hopes will be a long-running franchise for families. Worldwide it has earned $68M.
4. The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It– $10M/$43.8M
5. Cruella– $6.7M/$56M
6. Spirit Untamed– $2.5M/$10.9M
7. The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2– $1M
Deon Taylor returns to one of his earliest hit films with The House Next Door: Meet the Blacks 2, which opened with $1M at just 420 locations. That’s still $3M less than the debut week for the 2016 film, which also starred Mike Epps and served as a horror parody.The sequel has a 28-day theatrical release window before it hits VOD.
Kevin Bacon is about to get toxic! The subject of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” is set to play the villain in Legendary’s Toxic Avenger reboot according to THR, and let’s just assume he’ll play some sort of cruel corporate CEO or oil exec, something along those lines. He’s got the look for it.
Of course, Toxic Avenger is based on the cult classic Troma franchise, and will star Peter Dinklage as Toxie himself, an everyman who is doused in toxic waste and gains superhuman powers and a ghastly image. Also in the cast are Zola‘s Taylour Paige and Good Boys‘ Jacob Tremblay. The film will be directed by Macon Blair, best known for starring in Blue Ruin and Green Room, but made his feature directing debut with the underrated I Don’t Feel at Home in this World Anymore.
There had been rumors of Elijah Wood, not Kevin Bacon, playing the villain who The Iluminerdi says Bob Garbinger, boss to Dinklage’s character and described as “Evil head of the shady company Garb X. He has no regard for the wellbeing of anyone but himself and embarks on a murderous spree to become as powerful as Toxie.”
Sounds about right, but if they were wrong about Wood then why trust the rest? Honestly, either Bacon or Wood would be perfect for the B-movie stylings we expect from a Troma-esque project.
It made so much sense, and with the return of familiar faces like Hayden Christensen added to the cast it was almost a foregone conclusion that Liam Nesson would be making an appearance in the upcoming Disney+ series Obi-Wan. Sadly, it appears that is not the case as Nesson recently alluded to his absence in a talk with Collider. Or not. Really it depends on how you read it. When asked if he was aware that fans all over were hoping for him to be on the show, Neeson responded, “I’ll be honest with you: I haven’t heard that at all.” Ok, so he’s not hip to the internet buzz, not too surprising for a guy in his 70s. Later Neeson questioned whether Star Wars was on it’s way out, dying out were the exact words. So either Neeson is truly separated from pop culture/Hollywood media (I mean, who didn’t see the investor day announcements from 2020?) or he’s playing coy.
While the intimation is that Neeson hasn’t been contacted, he never actually says that. He only says he wasn’t aware of fans clamoring for his return, then expresses surprise that Star Wars is still going strong. When asked whether he’d be up for playing Qui-gon Jinn again Neeson responded “Sure, I’d be up for that, yeah”
My take? Neeson will appear in voice-over as Obi-Wan’s fallen master. I mean, can we really take anyone at their word when they’re asked about appearing in any of these big franchises? They sign their souls as collateral on the NDA, of course they’re not going to tell us. There’s no reason for Neeson to be on set, after all Qui-gon was the first Jedi to defy death but he was only able to communicate telepathically, no hazy blue force ghosts for the ponytailed one. Now, if he doesn’t show up it leaves a big hole. Historically Obi-Wan’s time on Tatooine was spent looking over Luke from afar, nothing exciting. Someone had to teach him to commune from the dead, and it was established at the end of Revenge of the Sith that Jinn was speaking to both Yoda and Kenobi.
The only way an Obi-Wan Kenobi show works is if you have bookended falshback episodes. Opening and closing with Obi-Wan meditating in his hut on Tatooine (this is where Neeson would come in), with flashback episodes of his time with Anakin as the meat of the episode. I know, they are crediting Christensen as Vader, but why pay an actor to put on a suit. They could get a stuntman to do it at half the cost. I guess all we can do is wait and see, but I’m putting my money on the scenario above.
We talk about this time every year. When the Cannes Film Market comes around, that’s when some of the biggest, awards season movies get put together. And now here’s one that is definitely going to be seeking some gold as it’s the latest from Todd Haynes and features Oscar-winning actresses Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore.
Todd Haynes’ upcoming film May December will star Natalie Portman and Julianne Moore. Samy Burch wrote the script, and here is how Deadline describes the film:
Twenty years after their notorious tabloid romance gripped the nation, Gracie Atherton-Yu and her husband Joe (23 years her junior) brace themselves for their twins to graduate from high school. When Hollywood actress Elizabeth Berry comes to spend time with the family to better understand Gracie, who she will be playing in a film, family dynamics unravel under the pressure of the outside gaze. Joe, never having processed what happened in his youth, starts to confront the reality of life as an empty-nester at 36. And as Elizabeth and Gracie study each other, the similarities and differences between the two women begin to ebb and flow. Set in picturesque and comfortable Camden, ME, May December is an exploration of truth, storytelling and the difficulties (or impossibility) of fully understanding another person.
This will be the latest collaboration between Haynes and Moore, having worked together previously on Safe, Far from Heaven, I’m Not There, and Wonderstruck. Haynes most recently directed Dark Waters, and has his Velvet Underground doc debuting at Cannes. Portman just wrapped on her return to Marvel in Thor: Love & Thunder.
Resident Evil fans are living their best lives right now. The legendary Capcom video game franchise has seen one set of blockbuster movies come to an end, only to launch into a big screen revival that arrives this September, plus a Netflix anime Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness next month. And on top of that is Netflix’s live-action series, which has rounded up a pretty sweet cast that includes John Wick‘s Lance Reddick as Wesker.
Reddick is the only cast member with a named role, playing series villain Albert Wesker, who seeks to destroy and replace humankind. The character is usually depicted as a white guy, played in the Paul W.S. Anderson films by Jason O’Mara and Shawn Roberts.
The rest of the cast is really great, but we don’t know their roles. Charlie’s Angels star Ella Balinska, Tamara Smart of Artemis Fowl, Adeline Rudolph of Riverdale, plus Siena Agudong, Paola Nuñez are on board. But who will play Alice?
Andrew Dabb (Supernatural) will act as showrunner of the series, which will take place across two different timelines. Here is the synopsis:
In the first timeline, fourteen-year-old sisters Jade and Billie Wesker are moved to New Raccoon City. A manufactured, corporate town, forced on them right as adolescence is in full swing. But the more time they spend there, the more they come to realize that the town is more than it seems and their father may be concealing dark secrets. Secrets that could destroy the world.
Cut to the second timeline, well over a decade into the future: there are less than fifteen million people left on Earth. And more than six billion monsters — people and animals infected with the T-virus. Jade, now thirty, struggles to survive in this New World, while the secrets from her past – about her sister, her father and herself – continue to haunt her.
From the gods of the DC Universe to the gods of Norse mythology, Zack Snyder just can’t stay away from all-powerful superbeings. It was revealed yesterday during Netflix’s Geeked Week stream the voice cast for Snyder’s animated Twilight of the Gods series, and it’s an impressive lineup.
Sylvia Hoeks will voice Sigrid, Stuart Martin is Leif, Pilou Asbæk will play Thor, with John Noble as Odin and Paterson Joseph as Loki. Rahul Kohli is voicing Egill, with Jamie Clayton as the voice of The Seid-Kona, Kristofer Hivju will play Andvari, Peter Stormare as Ulfr, Jamie Chung as Hel, Lauren Cohen as Inge, and Corey Stoll as Hrafnkel.
Snyder will produce and write the series, with Man of Steel and Batman v Superman storyboard artist Jay Oliva directing. He previously helmed the R-rated Justice League Dark film, as well.
This is a busy time for Snyder, as he’s coming off Army of the Dead‘s success for Netflix. A sequel to that film is in the works, along with a prequel series Army of the Dead: Lost Vegas. He also plans to direct The Last Photograph, which will be a reunion with 300 writer Kurt Johnstad.
