Review: ‘The Vault’
Freddie Highmore And Liam Cunningham Lead A Spanish Heist Thriller With A World Cup Kick

By
Travis Hopson
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A heist movie doesn’t need much to be an effectively entertaining ride. An electrifying atmosphere helps, along with a few characters you can get behind, and an impossible goal to achieve. Even when formulaic, there can be a good time to be had. And that’s the mindset you’ll want to have going into The Vault, a Euro heist thriller that follows virtually all of the genre’s tropes, but does so with the snappy energy of Spain’s 2010 World Cup victory as its backdrop.

Freddie Highmore is brilliant young engineer Thom Laybrick, fresh out of college and expected to strike it big in the world of business. But Thom doesn’t want any of that, and when approached by the mysterious Lorraine (Astrid Bergès-Frisbey) with a unique job offer to help a team of criminals bust into the impenetrable Bank of Spain in Madrid to retrieve a valuable treasure, he can hardly refuse the challenge.

Like any good heist film, The Vault spends much of its time on figuring out the details and establishing character relationships. The team is led by the grizzled Walter Moreland (Ser Davos…er, Liam Cunningham), with James (Sam Riley) as his deep-sea-diving right-hand-man. Together, they defied the odds and found this pirate treasure at the bottom of the sea, only to have it confiscated by the Spanish government. Now, Walter wants it back and will stop at nothing to get it, and certainly won’t be deterred by a bulldog Head of Security hot on their trail. Thom, a newbie at all of this, ruffles the feathers of some of the others, while his close relationship to Lorraine could either hinder or bolster the entire mission.

Jaume Balagueró directs in no-nonsense fashion, capturing the thrill of the plan and the nationalistic zeal of the World Cup games being viewed by thousands literally just outside the building. The feel is closer to The Italian Job or The Bank Job, two fairly grounded films by heist standards, than to the coolness of an Ocean’s Eleven or the rhythm of a Baby Driver. The crime itself has its share of thrills, one watery close-call, and at least one surprising character swerve. They do something pretty clever with ice, as Thom’s intellect pays off in more ways than one.

Highmore has been a terrific actor since he was a kid, but he’s way too reserved here for someone who is meant to be exhilarated by this daring course his life has taken. The kind of vitality we expect from Thom is instead seen in Walter, with the great Liam Cunningham snarling his way through every scene. He’s like an old ship captain barking orders at his crew and it’s great. There are other solid turns from Bergès-Frisbey, the ever-consistent Riley, and Famke Janssen as Margaret, a government official with her own angle to play.

The Vault is like comfort food for the fan of heist thrillers. The pace is steady and breezy, and I imagine those who follow football will get a kick out of the World Cup playing such a key role.

Zack Snyder Says ‘Justice League 3’ Would’ve Been A Superman Movie

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March 22, 2021

When I think about the missteps made by the DCEU, the one that immediately comes to mind is the lack of a true Man of Steel sequel. The decision by Zack Snyder to immediately jump into Batman v Superman was removing crucial steps in establishing him as the centerpiece of this cinematic universe. While we know that Warner Bros. has a new Superman film in the works, there’s still some hope out there that Henry Cavill will return to the role.

And now Snyder reveals to Esquire that if he had stayed involved, Superman’s story was part of his future plans as the final chapter in his Justice League trilogy…

“I had just assumed that the final movie was going to be very much a Superman movie. The final chapter was going to be a large percentage of Superman to just bookend the whole thing. Because if Batman died, it would have very much fallen on Superman to be the de facto leader. By the way, at that point, Wonder Woman would have been made queen of the Themyscira, and she would be leading the warriors of Themyscira into battle against Darkseid herself. And Arthur would be leading the armies of Atlantians. And Superman basically is going to be the head of the Justice League and the Armies of Men. And so Superman would have gone from this kind of berserker Superman to a benevolent Superman.”

“Superman has the hugest arc of everybody because he goes from like the main villain to like the main hero. And that struck me as just really cool and fun and like a really interesting trajectory for him. Because I think traditionally, Superman is one of those characters that people don’t see as changing a lot. You know what I mean? He’s kind of a rock that everyone props against and I just thought, how cool would it be to make our Superman the character that goes on the most incredible journey.”

Whatever Snyder intended, we’re not likely to see any Justice League sequels of his in movie form. I maintain we could see them as a comic book, because they’ve already got the Jim Lee art sketched out for it. We discuss this and more in the latest episode of Cinema Royale, so check it out!

‘Apartment 7A’: ‘Relic’ Filmmaker Natalie Erika James And John Krasinski Team For New Horror

By

Travis Hopson

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March 22, 2021

One of the creepiest horror films I’ve seen over the last year was Relic, Natalie Erika James’ haunted house story that earned her a great deal of acclaim. She’s found what her next project will be, and she’s staying within that same realm, albeit with an assist from A Quiet Place‘s John Krasinski, making for a potentially awesome pair.

THR reports James will direct Apartment 7A, a new horror film that Krasinski will produce. As for plot details that’s being kept under wraps, which suggests they’re hiding something potentially big here. I’m not going to say her film is, possible, linked to the A Quiet Place franchise but when stufff is kept secret these are the ideas that pop up. That title sounds like a working one to me.

Michael Bay’s Platinum Dunes is on board in a producing capacity, as well.

Color me curious to see where this goes. James is a skillful horror director, especially in establishing atmosphere.

Cinema Royale: The All Snyder Cut Episode!

By

Travis Hopson

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March 22, 2021

This week on Cinema Royale there’s only one thing on the guy’s minds, the AWESOME new Zack Snyder’s Justice League. For something this big we weren’t about to go it alone and asked good friend of the show Matt Razak of Flixist.com to join us in breaking down the history and execution of this ground-breaking film that’s guaranteed to change how movies are made and released! Was the wait worth it? Will fans of Zack Snyder be satisfied? Is this truly the end of the Snyderverse or will Warner Bros. give in yet again? You’ve got questions, and we’ve got what passes for answers!

All this and more! You can subscribe to Cinema Royale wherever you get your podcasts! Follow the Punch Drunk Critics and Cinema Royale!

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‘Crater’: McKenna Grace Heads To The Moon For ‘Stand By Me’-esque Coming-Of-Age Story

By

Travis Hopson

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March 22, 2021

If there’s one up ‘n coming actress I think has the potential to be a gigantic star in the next few years it’s McKenna Grace. She’s been absolutely fantastic in pretty much everything, and has plenty of franchise experience with roles in Captain Marvel, Independence Day: Resurgence, Ready Player One, and the upcoming Ghostbusters: Afterlife. But it’s her smaller performances in films like Gifted, I Tonya, and Troop Zero that show her amazing range for someone who is only 14-years-old. And now she’ll take those talents to Disney+ for a new coming-of-age movie titled Crater.

Deadline reports Grace will star in Crater, described as a coming-of-age story similar to Stand By Me, except this one is set on the moon.

Crater is described as a coming-of-age story in the vein of Stand By Me, set on a moon colony. After the death of his father, a boy growing up on a lunar mining colony takes a trip to explore a mysterious crater, along with his four best friends, prior to being permanently relocated to another planet.

The film will be directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, whose feature films include the Jonathan Groff comedy C.O.G. and horror The Stanford Prison Experiment. He’s also helmed episodes of 13 Reasons Why and the entire second season of Homecoming.

Filming on Crater begins this spring. Coming up for Grace is a recurring role on The Handmaid’s Tale, as well as the James Wan horror Malignant.

‘Combat Control’: Jake Gyllenhaal Teams With ‘Extraction’ Director For Medal Of Honor Recipient Story

By

Travis Hopson

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March 21, 2021

Extraction director Sam Hargrave isn’t going far from the field of battle for his next film, and he’s found another Marvel alum to headline it. Deadline reports Jake Gyllenhaal will star in Combat Control, which Hargrave will direct based on a Medal of Honor recipient’s true story.

MGM is close to acquiring Combat Control, which finds Gyllenhaal in the role of US Air Force Combat Controller John Allan Chapman, who was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic rescue efforts in Operation Enduring Freedom during a battle with Al-Gaeda. He is the first airman to receive the award since the Vietnam War.

Hargrave will direct from a script by Michael Russell Gunn, who is adapting Dan Schilling and Lori Chapman Longfritz’s New York Times bestselling book Alone at Dawn. Gyllenhaal will not only star but exec-produce, with Schilling acting as a military advisor on the film.

The search is on for an actress to play Air Force Captain Cora Alexander, given the difficult task of investigating whether Chapman is worthy of receiving the medal.

Here’s how the film is described:

Combat Control will be based on the true story of Air Force CCT Chapman, who died in battle on March 4, 2002 in Afghanistan. Following his death, no one imagined it would take over a decade for the truth of what really happened on that snowy mountainside to emerge. Fifteen years later, Air Force Captain Cora Alexander is tasked with the nearly impossible job of investigating whether Chapman is a worthy recipient of the medal, despite no eyewitnesses to his actions and the top-secret world surrounding clandestine operations. Alexander has to uncover the truth, and in revealing Chapman’s sacrifice to the world, she forges her own path to self-forgiveness and personal redemption.

When Chapman was awarded the military’s highest award on August 22, 2018, the U.S. government allowed the release of his story, and that of the classified Combat Controllers, to the public, giving the world a glimpse into the smallest, most secretive and most highly decorated unit in the U.S. military. The medal was the first awarded to a CCT in U.S. history and the first awarded to a member of the Air Force since Vietnam.

Gyllenhaal is currently shooting the Michael Bay film, Ambulance. Combat Control marks his return to military dramas after Jarhead in 2005.

‘The Lost City Of D’: Daniel Radcliffe Joins Sandra Bullock And Channing Tatum In The Adventure Rom-Com

By

Travis Hopson

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March 20, 2021

The Lost City of D has found a new star; Daniel Radcliffe. The Romancing the Stone-esque adventure/rom-com already stars Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum (once Ryan Reynolds), but obviously adding Harry Potter himself is another huge boost in star power.

According to Deadline, Radcliffe will take on the villain role in The Lost City of D, about “a reclusive romance novelist (Sandra Bullock) who was sure nothing could be worse than getting stuck on a book tour with her cover model (Channing Tatum) until a kidnapping attempt sweeps them both into a cutthroat jungle adventure, proving life can be so much stranger, and more romantic, than any of her paperback fictions.”

The film is directed by Aaron and Adam Nee, best known for their Tom Sawyer/Huck Finn heist comedy Band of Robbers. They’re also currently attached to that Masters of the Universe film that has been developing forever. Also in the cast are Together Together‘s Patti Harrison and Dolemite is My Name‘s Da’Vine Joy Randolph.

Radcliffe has been mixing it up lately, with the wild action flick Guns Akimbo and the prison thriller Escape from Pretoria. So it’s good to see him doing something mainstream like this again, and I kind of like him as a bad guy. He last played one in Now You See Me 2 and was clearly having a blast.

Review: ‘City Of Lies’
Not Even Forest Whitaker And Johnny Depp Can Salvage This Long-Awaited Crime Drama On The Death Of Notorious B.I.G.

By
Jake Sokolsky
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The 1997 murder of Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G., remains unsolved nearly twenty-five years later. Many wonder how it is possible that no one has been held responsible for one of the most influential rappers of all time being gunned down. City of Lies explores the murder through the eyes of Russell Poole (Johnny Depp), a disgraced former LAPD detective assigned to the case. Poole was part of the prestigious robbery and homicide division within the LAPD. Poole finds himself not only trying to solve the case but navigating racial tensions and corruption within the department. City of Lies takes place twenty years after the murder. In all that time, Poole has never been able to move past the case. It has consumed him and cost him everything – his job, marriage, and relationship with his children. His obsession with finding out the truth has been the most important thing.

Jack Jackson (Forest Whitaker) is a reporter with AWN. AWN is planning on publishing a Biggie retrospective and Jackson is trying to find the perfect angle for it. This leads Jackson to seek out Poole to hear his side of the story. Jackson became noteworthy early in his career winning a Peabody award. Unfortunately, this early fame caused him to have a sense of entitlement and to lose some of his morality and who he was. As Poole and Jackson’s relationship grows and the story unfolds, Jackson realizes the many twists and turns of the case. Poole opens Jackson’s eyes to LAPD’s connection with Suge Knight – the former CEO of Death Row Records. Poole believed that Knight had an influence on the LAPD and employed crooked cops. As the two men become closer both, they share a common goal – to find Biggie’s killer and bring closure to Christopher Wallace’s family.

City of Lies is based on the book LAByrinth, which was written by Randall Sullivan – a Pulitzer Prize winner. LAByrinth is a nonfiction book that was Poole’s account of the story. One of the first challenges for director Brad Furman and screenplay writer Christian Contreras was to come up with a way to turn that nonfiction story into a cinematic experience. To do so, they created the fictional Jackson character to frame the film with a present-day Poole telling him the tale. While the film is based on a true story, Jackson is entirely fictional. It is a good thing they created Jackson however, because it provided the opportunity for Whitaker to join the cast.

City of Lies is Whitaker and Depp’s first film together since Platoon in 1986. Seeing the two opposite each other for the first time in over 30 years was definitely special and the chemistry was there. Both are superb actors and that is showcased in City of Lies as they are able to play off each other. The problem is, they didn’t have a lot to work with. The script drags on and somehow a film that features multiple murders, a bank robbery, and numerous criminal investigations just isn’t overly exciting. I was hoping for an edge of your seat thriller, and City of Lies is far from it.

The film is full of gray, muted, colors and much of the dialogue seemingly lacks emotion. Poole is clearly down on his luck and Furman and Depp portray this perfectly, but it costs the film some energy. There are some aspects of City of Lies that were superb, however. Furman and team did a wonderful job bringing the audience back into the mid-90s. The sets, outfits, and general feel were all there. Furman mixes in clips of interviews and news reports about 2Pac and Biggie that were also incredibly interesting. These clips not only give some relevance to certain scenes but provide important context. Arguably the crowning jewel of the film is the soundtrack. Throughout we get the perfect mix of 90s rap that adds a touch of nostalgia to the film. Unfortunately, City of Lies squanders the talent of it’s two leads and is simply a forgettable crime drama.

SXSW Review: ‘The Spine Of Night’
A Wildly Violent, Rotoscoped Fantasy Epic Not For The Faint Of Heart

By
Travis Hopson
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Well, I didn’t go to SXSW expecting to see the most grisly animated film I’ve ever witnessed, but that’s what The Spine of Night delivered. Perhaps the title should’ve been a warning? Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King’s grim epic fantasy comprises multiple tales of brutality, magic, tyranny, and heroic sacrifice set across what appears to be multiple centuries across time. The hyper-realistic, rotoscoping animation of Ralph Bakshi would seem a clear influence, but the film stands on its own as an astonishingly unforgiving tale of power run amok.

The Spine of Night is, first and foremost, about storytelling. Everybody has one, and they all center on “the Bloom”, a magical blue flower with extraordinary powers. The first we hear is from the naked swamp mage Tzod (Lucy Lawless) as she approaches a skull-shaped cave and its ancient Guardian (Richard E. Grant) in search of the flower’s gifts. Rather than fight, as he’s warily done for years, they exchange stories. Hers involves a petty prince (Patton Oswalt) who massacres her tribe with the help of a mercenary (Joe Manganiello), all to steal the power of the Bloom from her. It’s then that her path crosses with Ghal-sur (Jordan Douglas Smith), a seemingly innocent scholar whose intentions are malevolent to be sure, and spell doom for the entire world.

Each story told by Tzod and the Guardian presents a different phase of the Bloom, from it falling into Ghal-Sur’s hands, to his abuse of its power and the horrors he unleashes on the people, to the small band of fighters who attempt to stop him. Each is more horrific and cruel than the last. Even the minor diversions into smaller, seemingly-hopeful tales, such as one with the last two survivors of a Ghal-Sur massacre, end in slaughter. It can be a bit much to take consuming this much rampant bloodshed, and the filmmakers take it to the extreme. You’ll see countless decapitations, mutilations, immolations, and yes, there’s worse.

And yet, the Fire and Ice-inspired animation is never less than sheer aristry and wonderfully detailed in its depictions of sorcery and violence. Free from the restrictions of live-action filmmaking, Gelatt and King go wild with eye-popping displays, and allow their A-list cast of voice actors to express with gusto. If there’s an over-arching theme of these stories it’s that the cycle of violence is never-ending, and wielded by both the good and the bad. These cycles create the legends, fables, and myths that civilizations are built upon. Ultimately, The Spine of Night is set apart by how its visual beauty works in symphony with the gruesome imagery on display. This one is sure to be a winner with fans of this art style and the rare adult-themed fantasy epic.

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‘Game of Thrones’ Prequels: HBO To Develop Three More Shows

By

Cortland Jacoby

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March 19, 2021

If you were like the rest of the world and left completely unsatisfied by the final season of Game of Thrones, you now have three more shows taking place in Westeros you can feel disappointed by. (I’m kidding. We’ll give them a chance.)

Deadline is reporting HBO is developing three new shows set in George R.R. Martin’s universe. The first and most fully formed of the three is 9 Voyages also called Sea Snake. Long time TV writer and producer Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist, Gotham, Pennyworth) is attached to the show’s creative team. Despite his grievances with how Game of Thrones ended, Martin is also involved in the project.

The title of the series refers to “the great voyages at sea made by Corlys Velaryon aboard the Sea Snake ship.Velaryon journeyed to places including Pentos, Dragonstone and around the bottom of Westeros as well as to Lys, Tyrosh and Myr. He reached the fabled lands of Yi Ti and Leng, whose wealth doubled that of the House Velaryon, and him and the Ice Wolf headed north searching for passage around the top of Westeros, only to find frozen seas and icebergs as big as mountains.”

Flea Bottom would take us back into the capital of Kings Landing. Instead of focusing on the goings on of the Red Keep, the series will take place in Flea Bottom, the poor area of the city. Fans of the original show will know that fan favorites Davos Seaworth and Gendry Waters grew up in that neighborhood. However don’t get your hopes up that those characters will return (though I would watch Joe Dempsie’s Gendry anytime). All three new series will be prequels.

In the last final seasons of Game of Thrones many fans tried to predict the series’s ending using the show’s lore and Westerosi History. Of course they didn’t use any of that, but the new series 10,000 Ships is said by Variety to revolve around Princess Nymeria, the warrior Princess who inspired Ayra Stark to the point of naming her direwolf after her. Like Flea Bottom, 10,000 Ships does not have a screenwriter attached to it yet.

If any of these shows appeal to you, hold your dragons. None of them have been officially greenlit yet. However, House of the Dragon, another prequel series is set to air in 2022. According to the show’s official website, it is “based on George R.R. Martin’s book Fire & Blood, the series will tell the story of House Targaryen (a.k.a. the House that gave us the Mother of Dragons herself, Daenerys Targaryen) and take place 300 years before the events of Game of Thrones.”

Paddy Considine (The Outside), Olivia Cooke (Ready Player One), Emma D’Arcy (Truth Seekers), Matt Smith (The Crown), Steve Toussaint (Doctor Who), Eve Best (Nurse Jackie, The King’s Speech), Rhys Ifans (Notting Hill, The Amazing Spider-Man) and Sonoya Mizuno (Ex Machina, Crazy Rich Asians) are set to star in the series.