FILE - In this Jan. 31, 1988, file photo, Washington Redskins quarterback Doug Williams prepares to let go of a pass during first quarter of Super Bowl XXII against the Denver Broncos in San Diego. Williams, who set a record with 340 yards passing in the NFL football game and became the first African-American quarterback to win a Super Bowl. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola, File)
For NFL fans here in Washington, DC, football doesn’t always give them much to cheer for. And the QB situation there is always a headache, it seems, no matter what they try and do. But there’s one guy that everybody respects, even me as someone who grew up here and despises the team with the heat of a thousand suns. Doug Williams, who led the team to a victory in Super Bowl XXII, is going to be the subject of a new biopic from uber-producer Will Packer.
Deadline reports that Packer and his Will Packer Productions have acquired the rights to tell Doug Williams’ story in a feature film. Williams, with his leadership, poise, and accuracy, helped shatter the myth about African-American QBs in the NFL. He helped lead Washington to the Super Bowl in 1988, earning MVP and becoming the first African-American QB to lead his team to the championship.
I think that was the one and only time I ever rooted for Washington to win anything.
Packer is best-known for the many hit films he’s produced with Kevin Hart, including Think Like a Man Too, Night School, and Ride Along 2. Most recently he’s been the force behind such films as Girls Trip, Little, and The Photograph.
This movie is going to be a very big deal around here, and I can’t wait to see who they cast as Williams and if they decide to shoot locally.
With so few productions going forward, casting announcements have been pretty quiet. So here are a few that have emerged now that it looks like things are starting to ease up.
Jojo Rabbit and Leave No Trace star Thomasin McKenzie will star in the dance drama Joika, in which she’ll play ballet dancer Joy Womack. Womack is a California native of Russian ethnicity, and the second American to ever graduate and sign a contract with Moscow’s infamous Bolshoi Ballet. The 26-year-old Womack is personally overseeing McKenzie’s ballet training, as well. [THR]
Roland Emmerich is returning to the disaster movie genre that he’s well-known for with Moonfall, and Patrick Wilson will be one of those hoping the moon doesn’t literally come crashing down to Earth. Wilson plays a “disgraced former NASA astronaut whose last mission, which ended in tragedy, holds a clue about the impending catastrophe.” He joins a cast that already includes Halle Berry, Josh Gad, and Charlie Plummer who is a new addition. Wilson most recently starred in Emmerich’s war film Midway. Moonfall hits theaters in 2021. [THR]
In news that’ll make PDC co-founder John Nolan very happy, Gabrielle Union will star in and produce The Perfect Find, which has just been acquired by Netflix. The film will be directed by Numa Perrier (Jezebel) with Leigh Davenport adapting the bestseller by Tia Williams. Union will play “Jenna Jones, a woman hopeful that her new job in beauty journalism will rep a fresh start in her life. She soon learns that her new boss, Darcy, is her frenemy. Jenna starts a relationship with the company’s videographer, Eric, and things get complicated when she learns he’s Darcy’s son.” [Deadline]
If only all professional comebacks could be so sweet. Netflix wants to get your household dancing with the new dance comedy, Feel the Beat, which looks a little bit Sweet Home Alabama, a little bit Mighty Ducks, a little bit Step Up? Any of ’em. It’s an underdog story you can dance to.
Feel the Beat stars Sofia Carson, best-known for her role in Disney Channel’s Descendants, as April, a selfish Broadway dancer who blows her big shot, and goes crawling back home to her small Wisconsin hometown. And guess what? That’s where her old teacher is training a misfit group of young dancers and April would be a big help. Know what else? April may not have wanted this job, but she’s going to learn just as much from these kids as they will from her. Awwww, shucks. Also, her ex-flame is in town, so….sparks?
They call it a “formula” for a reason. People like this kind of stuff, especially now when we’re all cooped up indoors looking for something fun to take our minds off the world. Feel the Beat also stars Crazy Ex-Girlfriend‘s Donna Lynne Champlin, Wolfgang Novogratz (The Half of It), Rex Lee, Brandon Kyle Goodman, Lidya Jewett, Sadie Lapidus, Johanna Colón, Shaylee Mansfield, Shiloh Nelson, Justin Allan, Carina Battrick, Kai Zen, Marissa Jaret Winokur, Dennis Andres, and Veronica Mars‘ Enrico Colantoni as, guess what, the encouraging father. The film is directed by Elissa Down, an Australian filmmaker who made a splash back in 2008 with her semi-autobiographical The Black Balloon.
Alien fans should not hold their breath for a new addition to the series, at least not for one with the legendary Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley. In a new interview for Empire Magazine, the veteran actress was tight-lipped about possibly coming back for a new Alien film. “I don’t know. Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”
Weaver went on to reveal that Alien franchise producer Walter Hill has written a 50-page treatment for a new installment taking Ripley in a new direction, about a year and a half ago. Rumors have been circling for years for a fifth Ripley film, including a scraped project from District 9 director Neill Blomkamp
Disney, who now seems to own everything including the property through its 20th century Fox merger, has not released any information indicating its plans for the film franchise. In 2017, Ridley Scott left room for a third installment in the Alien prequel series, Alien: Covenant.
I, for one, am torn on Weaver’s reluctance to return to the character. While her Ripley character is iconic and a-way-before-its time portrayal of a woman, I get not wanting to do a reboot. Everything is getting a reboot or new installment these days. Could it be cool to see an over 65-year-old woman kick ass and take names? Absolutely, that representation is needed and would be cool to watch. But its gotta be done right and it might be worth it to let sleeping dogs, or in this case aliens, lie.
It’s true, when one major studio film moves, it starts a toppling deck of changes that reverberate all throughout Hollywood. Last night, Warner Bros. shifted a bunch of big-time titles, including Tenet, Godzilla vs. Kong, The Matrix 4, and Wonder Woman 1984. It was inevitable that another studio would see this as an opportunity, and that’s what’s happening with the upcoming James Bond film, No Time to Die.
No Time to Die has moved up five days to November 20th 2020. While this movie isn’t huge, it was made possible by the departure of Godzilla vs. Kong. We also can’t forget it was originally pegged for an Easter weekend release before that was disrupted by the coronavirus, so any chance MGM sees to move up they’re going to take.
And now we can sit back and wait to see what movie slides into No Time to Die‘s old date of November 25th. Don’t be shocked when that happens later today or tomorrow. Lookin’ at you, Disney.
In the new film The Short History Of The Long Road, Sabrina Carpenter sheds her Disney persona for the open road. Writer/Director Ani Simon-Kennedy brings us a story of modern American nomads, Nola (Carpenter) and her dad Clint. Traveling around in an old van, being homeschooled with no cellphone, it’s the only life Nola has ever known, her mother leaving them when she was a baby. Though its clear its she’s starting to question her father’s methodology, she doesn’t get the chance to rebel. With his sudden passing, Nola is left to pick up the pieces and navigate a world without rules and her only companion.
After she’s left abandoned, Nola tries to figure out her next move. For a large majority of the film, we are watching Nola trying to survive, sleeping in abandoned houses, relying on the kindness of strangers, stealing gas. It’s clear her lifestyle has hindered her ability to connect with parental figures, forcing herself into womanhood when she clearly is still needing to be somebody’s child.
In films like Captain Fantastic and Leave No Trace, these dads are portrayed as obsessive fanatics scared of the outside world. The Walking Dead’s Steven Ogg’s gives a more subdued and realistic performance as Nola’s dad, Clint. You see his insecurities and failures as a parent, but you understand what Nola sees in him. He’s not a fantastic radical, he’s a free spirit who loves his daughter. Ogg builds his character around these layers, giving Carpenter something complicatedly beautiful to play off of.
Anchoring the entire film is Sabrina Carpenter’s performance. This is the first real leading role Carpenter has had outside of the Disney machine. Thankfully, she has the nuance and maturity to pull off the part. Carpenter has full control over the character’s emotions, flipping between desperate and vulnerable to guarded and skeptical at the drop of a hat.
When her van breaks down, she decides to plant some shallow roots in a small western town. There she meets Miguel, a mechanic who begrudgingly willing to fix her most prized possession in exchange for help around his shop. This role is perfect for Danny Trejo. Until he pops up halfway through, the film is heading in a heavier and bleaker direction. Instead, Trejo brings a light and lively energy to Nola’s journey, being sweet yet tough. It’s an effective realistic performance proving what an asset Trejo can be in a film’s arsenal.
Simon-Kennedy’s realistic style keeps the piece from veering into melodrama. Events happen realistically, with beautiful and sparse western Americana landscapes bridging the gap between plot points. I could see the film being more effective being a short story or even a short film, any medium that where the material didn’t need to be stretched and could be very direct with its point. Its wandering and slow nature makes the film seem way longer than its 90-ish minute runtime. We eventually reach our destination but its impact is muffled.
Despite some growing pains, The Short History Of The Long Road tells a quiet and effective coming of age tale. But it’s really Carpenter and Trejo’s performances that will last longer in your memory than the plot.
The Short History Of The Long Road will be screened at select drive-in theaters starting June 12th and is available on-demand on June 16th. You can watch the trailer below.
When Warner Bros. pushed Tenet back two weeks and Wonder Woman 1984 to October, we knew that couldn’t be the end of it. There would be further moves, and now we see more of the studio’s anticipated films, including The Matrix 4 and Godzilla vs. Kong, finding new homes.
Warner Bros. has pushed Lana Wachowski’s The Matrix 4 nearly a year, from May 21st 2021 to April 1st 2022. On that date it’ll be nearing a battle with Marvel’s Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, which opens a week prior.
And if we thought Junkie XL being named as composer of Godzilla vs. Kong was a sign it would stay put, we were very wrong. The fourth film in WB/Legendary’s MonsterVerse has taken over the May 21st 2021 date vacated by The Matrix 4.
Also, the Tom & Jerry movie has gone from December 23rd 2020 to March 5th 2021, while Robert Zemeckis’ adaptation of Roald Dah’s The Witches will now open on an unspecified date in 2021, rather than on October 9th 2020.
Olivia Munn has come a long way since her days hawking video games on G4, appearing in acclaimed shows such as The Newsroom and living a nerd fantasy by playing Psylocke in X-Men: Apocalypse. Now she’s about to lead what could be her own action franchise with Replay, a film that is being compared to The Raid and John Wick because of its close-quarters combat.
I mean…set a lower bar, could ya? Those heights are unreachable.
Replay is a sci-fi/action flick from writer/director Jimmy Loweree. Munn plays a woman armed with illegal, bleeding edge tech which she plans to use to reverse time and save her husband who was kidnapped and murdered.
Sounds more like Edge of Tomorrow and Terminator than anything else, right?
Munn will also produce the film with Ethan Erwin, who has tremendously high praise and expectations for his star and director…
“Audiences are going to witness the birth of the next great action star with Olivia Munn in this film. And our director, Jimmy Loweree, is an incredible young filmmaker, whose vision for this movie is going to blow people away,” Erwin said. [THR]
When the coronavirus outbreak first started, we saw studios hedging their bets that it would be short-lived. They pushed their movies back a few days, a couple of weeks, but once reality set in many of them were pulled from the schedule completely, or shuffled off to digital release. Warner Bros. has been playing this game of chicken with its two biggest releases of the year, Tenet, and Wonder Woman 1984. Today, they finally blinked…just a little.
Warner Bros. has pushed Christopher Nolan’s Tenet back two weeks to July 31st. This comes as AMC, Regal, and other theaters are fully expecting to be open to meet its original July 17th date. So what will they get instead? A re-release of Inception, to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Not quite the same, but okay.
And as expected, the move has reshuffled the decks elsewhere, as WB has also moved Wonder Woman 1984. Except in the sequel’s case it’s for two months, from August 14th to October 2nd.
Don’t expect it to end there, as Disney may follow suit with a shift in dates for Mulan and Hamilton. Stay tuned.
But the key here is that WB is counting on the situation to lighten up in those two weeks, a big gamble considering the spikes we’re seeing in multiple states all across the country. As states begin to reopen in complete disregard for the rate of infections, the situation could get much worse before it gets better.
If the tagline feels like a spoiler, don’t worry: the trailer gives those details away as does the first five minutes of Darkness Falls.
Before we are even introduced to our hero Detective Jeff Anderson (Shawn Ashmore of OG X-Men fame), we get introduced to a grisly murder of Elizabeth (Vahina Giocante) by two killers who have a pretty unique way of killing their victims in a horrible fashion that leaves no trace and makes it look like a suicide. As this is almost the perfect crime, the killers are very calm and collected as they do their deed. Little do they know that their victim is the wife of a cop.
Jeff is one day away from making Captain and is just excited to come home from work to spend some time with his wife and son (Judak Mackey) when he walks in on the one thing absolutely no one on earth wants to ever see in their life. Even though he shields his son from witnessing the unspeakable, his son does comment that he had a nightmare that two men were in the house. This leads Jeff down a dark spiral as he starts to become obsessed with all suicides thinking they are murders. With the city he’s in having more than 1000 suicides a year, he’s starting to look like the crazy guy. He even gets the nickname “the suicide cop.” With his peers thinking he’s crazy, and his former partner-turned-captain (Daniella Alonso) concerned for his well-being, and barely seeing his son as he lives out his car while the kid’s with grandma, he’s spiraling away.
Of course, he finally threads the needle and gets hip to what the killers (Gary Cole and Richard Harmon) are actually doing and manages to catch them just as they are about to continue their murders, which leads to even more crazy outcomes as a game of cat-and-mouse commences. It feels as though the filmmakers saw Seven and tried to make Darkness Falls in that same vein. Even when you finally learn the motive from the serial killers, it still feels strange and doesn’t make too much sense.
While it’s mostly predictable, Darkness Falls has a somewhat satisfying ending. Unfortunately, the film’s writing and lead aren’t strong. Ashmore is a fan-favorite as Iceman from X-Men and other films/TV shows, he doesn’t really nail this movie as the lead. There’s a moment about halfway through the film where he goes full-on “A Beautiful Mind” as he’s trying to “get inside the head” of the killers and goes on a weird rant that really comes out of left field, and isn’t acted very well. On the other hand, Gary Cole really delivers as one of the serial killers. Cole’s often known from his comedy bits (and most recently as a lovable racist grandpa on Mixed-ish), but he turns up the intensity in Darkness Falls as one half of the deranged killing duo. He’s genuinely a terrifying character. The other killer is played by Richard Harmon (who is probably best known for playing self-serving delinquent Murphy from CW’s The 100), so playing a serial killer isn’t a far stretch for him.
Unfortunately, at a brisk 84 minutes, Darkness Falls feels too rushed. This probably would work better as a limited TV series and give more time to flesh out the motivation behind the killers (or see them more in action). In a perfect world, this idea would work better on TV with Detective Anderson as someone who “hand a hunch” and started investigating these kills, only for his wife to get caught up in it and then have him spiral downward while seeking justice. But instead, the way the film is presented (as time skips around for no reason), it feels a little too rushed.
