It’s time to delve back into Charlie Kaufman‘s realm of the surreal. It’s been five years since Kaufman gave us the acclaimed, but somewhat overlooked, stop-motion film Anomalisa. Now he’s back and with Netflix for I’m Thinking of Ending Things, an adaptation of Iain Reid’s creepy novel about couple and a road trip to meet one’s parents. It almost sounds like the setup for a comedy, but in Kaufman’s hands you know there’s so much more going on.
The film is an adaptation of Iain Reid’s novel, and stars Jessie Buckley, Jesse Plemons, Toni Collette, and David Thewlis. Buckley, a rising star from her roles in Beast and Wild Rose, plays an unnamed woman who, despite having second thoughts about their relationship, goes to meet her boyfriend’s parents at the family farm. There, they get trapped by a snowstorm, and the woman begins to question her reality.
The trailer is weird, and melancholy, and also pretty funny, all the things we come to expect from the man who gave us such mindbenders as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Synecdoche, New York.
I’m Thinking of Ending Things hits Netflix on September 4th.
Trust me. I get it. I honestly do. David Ayer’s gritty street films are culturally insensitive, crazy violent, and thin on plot. As someone who has watched literally every movie he’s done, I know the drill going in. There’s little that’s different about his latest, the gang warfare saga The Tax Collector, but it’d be lying to say it didn’t grab me. Because for all of the many things that can be frowned upon in the movies Ayer does, he’s always smart enough to lean on strong performances, and he gets one from star Bobby Soto.
That may come as a surprise for those who have seen a tatted up Shia LaBeouf plastered all over the promos. It’s true, LaBeouf is a heavy appropriately-named Creeper, and he strikes a surprisingly imposing figure as a crime cartel’s wild attack dog. But his performance, resembling a white boy trying to sound like Machete because it’s a white boy trying to sound like Machete, is a distraction from the movie’s real star. I don’t know Bobby Soto; he’s new to me, but he has a charisma and real presence as David Cuevas, a “tax collector” for an unseen crimelord named Wizard. David and Creeper basically strong arm the other gangs to give up a cut of their earnings, and you can guess what happens to those who don’t pay up.
David and Creeper’s daily routine isn’t that far off from the corrupt cops of Ayer’s End of Watch or the police partners of Training Day, which the director also wrote. They speed around L.A., talkin’ shit and roughing up whoever needs it. Unlike Creeper, a violent loner whose loyalty is more to his compadre than to anyone else, David has a wife (Cinthya Carmona) and kids to look out for, with a mobbed-up uncle (George Lopez) looking out for him. The duality of his criminal and domestic life is a subject Ayer has tackled before, but there’s a greater emphasis on it here, even as David’s world spirals into bloody vengeance.
For a good stretch, The Tax Collector seems pretty aimless. David is a good hand, but he doesn’t seem to have the raging ambition most figures in these movies do. That all changes with the arrival of Conejo (rapper Jose Martin), an angel of death sent in to take over the streets, which are soon running red with the blood of friends and family.
Ayer has done so many of these gangland movies he’s got it down to a science. The Tax Collector is virtually indistinguishable from Harsh Times, Street Kings, and even Bright minus the orcs and shit. The L.A. streets are a dangerous, bullet-riddled nightmare, and everybody is a macho thug looking for an excuse. The “yo vato” lingo may make sense, but coming from LaBeouf it proves problematic. Don’t get me wrong…I get what Ayer and LaBeouf are going for with Creeper. Minus the extreme violence, I’ve known guys like him who have appropriated the culture of others so deeply they take on perceived mannerisms. It’s not that LaBeouf is even bad in the role. Tatted up, sneering, cauliflower-eared, and with piercing, intense eyes, he looks like someone who has done a lot of dirt and been in his share of scraps.
It’s just a shame that LaBeouf takes away from Soto, who believably portrays a man crushed beneath two worlds that cannot coexist without bloodshed. Even though the script often sounds like it was intended for Grand Theft Auto or Saint’s Row, Soto makes the best of it as David begins to assess the impact of his criminal ways. But there’s no time to dwell on that for too long. The Tax Collector ends the way we knew it would right from the beginning; in a hail of gunfire and murder. At least Ayer delivers what we all came for; a conclusion as certain as death and, well, taxes.
Marvel is breaking some ground with their choice to direct Captain Marvel 2. Candyman filmmaker Nia DaCosta will be the first black woman to direct a Marvel movie, according to Deadline‘s report.
DaCosta will spearhead the next superhero adventure starring Brie Larson as Captain Marvel, the powerhouse Avenger whose solo debut banked over $1B in 2018. She will be taking over from directors Ryan Fleck and Anna Boden, who moved on after the first movie. Marvel had long been seeking a woman to direct the sequel, and DaCosta appeared to be edging out the competition.
Megan McDonnell (WandaVision) will write the script, moving the action from the ’90s into the present.
It was the acclaimed indie Little Woods (led by MCU vet Tessa Thompson) that was DaCosta’s breakthrough. That led to her being chosen to direct Jordan Peele’s revival of the Candyman horror franchise. While we’ve yet to see what she does in the realm of genre, the first trailer is definitely promising. If there’s one thing we can already establish about DaCosta it’s that she has a strong visual eye, and is unafraid of tackling complex social issues (Little Woods dealt with siblings during the opioid crisis), all of which I’m expecting she’ll bring to Marvel. This is a damn good choice.
Captain Marvel 2 is scheduled to open on July 8th 2022.
They say nothing unites like a common enemy and that’s exactly what brings the world’s best soldiers together in the trailer forRogue Warfare: Death of a Nation. Now, I’ll be honest, I wasn’t aware of this franchise but as soon as I read that this was the third film in a trilogy I started looking for the first two. While it may not be the finest war epic in history it does seem to be a fine slice of hyper-action. Let’s be real, to make an entertaining action movie you only need a few things; a charismatic ensemble of good guys (or just one really charismatic lead), a bad guy that poses a real threat, and lots of things that go boom in a pretty way…seems to me that Rogue Warfare: Death of a Nation has all three, PLUS a bonus in Stephen Lang as the President.
Check out the trailer below and look for Rogue Warfare: Death of a Nation in theaters, on demand and digital on September 25th, 2020!
Starring
Will Yun Lee, Jermaine Love, Rory Markham, Bertrand-Xavier Corbi, Katie Keene, Fernando Chien, Gina Decesare, Michael Blalock, Mike Mckee, Essam Ferris, with Chris Mulkey and Stephen Lang As “The President”
Riding high from the success from this summer’s Perry Mason, Robert Downey Jr. and Susan Downey are looking toward their next project. Today it was announced that Apple has ordered a straight to series drama from their production company Team Downey. Billions and The Good Wife writer Adam Perlman will join the Downeys as executive producer and write the series.
A title has not been announced, but the series will be focusing on a Canadian detective taking on a cold case. According to Variety, the show will be based on Michael Lista’s “The Sting”, an article that appeared in Toronto Life. The detective is in pursuit of a confession and becoming a hero when he gets in over his head in a sting operation, dealing with corrupt cops, fraternizing with the target and dealing with taxpayer bureaucracy. Lista will also co-executive produce.
Even though Team Downey failed with January’s Dolittle, Downey Jr. has always struck gold with the crime genre, whether that’s Zodiac, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, or my favorite show of the summer Perry Mason, which he executive produced. As of now, he will potentially play a supporting role in the series.
No word yet on when the series will go into production or be released on Apple TV+.
Deadline reports Hanks is in early talks to play Gepetto in Disney’s live-action Pinocchio. While this is pretty much exactly where things were with Hanks before, he’s now read the script and expressed to Zemeckis his desire to do the movie. Zemeckis and Chris Weitz wrote the script. Weitz is well-known to Disney, having written Rogue One and their Cinderella remake.
Do you really know what Pinocchio is all about? Wooden puppet, wants to be a real boy, cricket as his conscience? Donkey ears? You know the drill. Don’t expect much to change.
This will mark the fourth collaboration between Zemeckis and Hanks, having previously worked together on Forrest Gump, Castaway, and The Polar Express.
Have you grown comfortable having the entire Harry Potter film franchise at your fingertips on HBO Max? Well…you’re going to have to be without them for a while. Or you can invest in a Peacock subscription.
THR and Vulture report all eight films in the Harry Potter franchise are headed to NBCUniversal’s Peacock streaming service, at least for a month, beginning in October. They will be available in windows, coming on and off the platform over the next six months into 2021.
If you’re asking yourself, “Wait, isn’t Harry Potter a Warner Bros. thing?”, you are correct. For good reason, many expected the tales of the Boy Who Lived would be forever kept on HBO Max, but deals were struck long before the streaming service was even a twinkle in their eye. Select streaming and TV rights had previously been leased to NBCUniversal, lasting until 2025.
Another deal was made that allowed WarnerMedia to exclusively stream Harry Potter for three months beginning from the HBO Max launch through August 25th. The movies then head to Peacock beginning in October, before moving to NBC’s broadcast and cable networks intermittently through next March. At some point in early 2021 they will head back to Peacock.
There will be other HBO Max movies headed to Peacock, including Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy.
The long and short of it is this: WarnerMedia and NBCUniversal will be sharing Harry Potter for a while. I think it’s a good thing to have popular movies available to as many people as people, without forcing them to invest in any one streaming service. Most households can only afford one or two, and they shouldn’t have to waste time thinking about which to invest in.
The long-awaited (?) “Reynolds Cut” of Green Lanternisn’t the only thing Ryan Reynolds has going on today. According to THR, Reynolds will star in Everyday Parenting Tips, which may sound like a self-help guide but is actually a family-comedy setup at Universal by Phil Lord and Chris Miller.
Everyday Parenting Tips hails from Hollywood-favorite writer Simon Rich, based on a short story he wrote in New Yorker. Onboard to direct is Paul King, the guy who gave us two amazing Paddington movies, the second featuring the most wholesome prison stint in cinematic history.
So given King’s obvious talents, the premise of Everyday Parenting Tips seems perfect for him. Reynolds will play “a dad dealing with the everyday challenges of family and raising kids made all the most difficult by an ongoing Great Monster Uprising.”
Next up for Reynolds is the video game comedy Free Guy. He also has sequel The Hitman’s Bodyguard’s Wife, a voice role in The Croods 2, and the starry Netflix actioner Red Notice. Rich is the SNL alum who most recently wrote Seth Rogen’s an American Pickle, due out this week.
That’s right, it’s brand new logos for his upcoming DCEU film, The Suicide Squad! The title treatment, which he also got in multiple languages which is super cool, are very different from what the 2017 movie had. The bullet-riddled image gets the point across that this film, a spinoff/sequel/whatever will be closer to The Dirty Dozen in execution.
The cast includes returning favorites Margot Robbie as Harley Quinn, Viola Davis as Amanda Waller, Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flag, and Jai Courtney as Boomerang. New faces include Idris Elba, John Cena, Pete Davidson, Nathan Fillion, Storm Reid, Peter Capaldi, Taika Waititi, Alice Braga, and Michael Rooker. For the most part, we have no idea who they are playing, which is pretty cool.
You can get a look at the entire cast in a short vid in which each of them wishes Gunn a “Happy Birthday” in their own way. It’s expected that we’ll get some sort of first look teaser of The Suicide Squad during the DC FanDome event on August 22nd. The film opens next year on August 6th.
Regardless of what one thinks of Ridley Scott’s most-recent Alien films, it’s hard not to see some of their DNA in his upcoming HBO Max series, Raised by Wolves. Those who found films such as Prometheus and Alien: Covenant intriguing additions to that franchise, will want to see what Scott does with another post-apocalyptic future in which creation is key.
Exec-produced by Ridley Scott, who also directs the first episode, Raised by Wolves centers on an android tasked with raising human children, possibly clones, on an Earth that has been ravaged by war. It’s a plot not too dissimilar from the recent film, Mother, and I’m curious to see where Scott and creator Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners) go with it. Scott directs the first episode, while his son Luke (Morgan) directs three. There are ten episodes in total.
Travis Fimmel of Vikings is the most notable castmember, joined by Amanda Collin, Abubakar Salim, Winta McGrath, Niamh Algar, Jordan Loughran, Matias Varela, Felix Jamieson, Ethan Hazzard, Aasiya Shah, and Ivy Wong.
Raised by Wolves hits HBO Max on September 3rd.
SYNOPSIS: From executive producer Ridley Scott, Raised by Wolves centers on two androids tasked with raising human children on a mysterious virgin planet. As the burgeoning colony of humans threatens to be torn apart by religious differences, the androids learn that controlling the beliefs of humans is a treacherous and difficult task.
