This is turning out to be a busy time for Russell Crowe. Not only can he be seen right now in True History of the Kelly Gang, it was just a couple of days ago we learned his upcoming thriller, Unhinged, would be the first movie to hit theaters this summer. And now we’re learning that Crowe has signed on to star in a remake of Jacques Audiard’s French crime classic, A Prophet.
Variety reports Crowe will star in American Son, which is a remake of Audiard’s film which starred Niels Arestrup and Tahar Rahim in his breakout role. The story follows an Algerian prison inmate who is recruited into a lethal crime syndicate and rises in the ranks, all before turning on the mobster who mentored him.
Interestingly, the updated version will be directed by Rapman, the rapper-turned-filmmaker who is currently earning raves for Blue Story, a film we loved quite a bit here, too. If you’ve seen hit, you know Rapman’s sensibilities are perfect for A Prophet. However, he says to expect something different from his take on the material…
“It’s very, very different. You will relate to it very differently. I’m making it very modern. I’m making the story just as powerful, but we’re talking about different ethnic races. It’s going well so far. We’ve been casting and location scouting, and done all of that. We’re nearly there with it and we’re about to hopefully close a deal with our lead actor. If we get who we’re trying to get, it’s gonna be really special. I see why everybody loves A Prophet, and I think they’re gonna love American Son just as much. The journey that we’re gonna go down, even though it is really similar to A Prophet, it’s also very unique and very standalone compared to the original. That’s all I can really say. I can’t wait to start filming it.”
It’s a short walk from the highs of over-the-counter allergy meds to the dangerous world of drug dealers and criminals in Joey Klein’s mildly affecting but unfocused drama, Castle in the Ground. Of films that probably aren’t going to be high on anybody’s wishlist to watch while under strict shelter-in-place orders, a sad, grim story of terminal illness and opioid addiction ranks high on the list. Although the connection forged by stars Alex Wolff and the always-excellent Imogen Poots nearly make this worth the effort until Klein goes off on a weird thriller tangent.
The opioid crisis of Sudbury, Ontario is the centerpiece of Castle in the Ground, plunging us into a dark, menacing world of violence and self-destruction. In that, Klein isn’t attempting anything we haven’t seen in many films before, only less convincing in this case. Far better are the relationships between characters, all stricken with their own forms of disease or addiction that cause them to take irrational acts.
Wolff adds to his growing list of morose characters (Jumanji being an exception) as 19-year-old Henry, who has stayed behind from college to care for his terminally-ill mother Rebecca (Neve Campbell, excellent in a brief role). The bond between them is tight, but you can sense her pushing him away as the end nears, and the pain of that hits him hard. It’s also what drives him to do anything and everything that she needs; picking up her prescriptions, grinding her pain medications (thus putting him in close proximity to addictive meds), and distributing them to her whenever she asks. Henry’s sadness is all-consuming, driving away his girlfriend, and leaving him in a very dark place when he’s suddenly left alone.
Klein teases the subtly manipulative hold Rebecca had over her son, and when she’s gone, that feeling he has of needing to help someone doesn’t just go away. Enter Ana (Poots), the loud, hard-partying neighbor from across the hall, who is there trying to overcome, quite unsuccessfully, an opioid addiction. Men shuffle in and out of her place, all looking just as strung-out as she does. When the pharmacist stops filling her prescriptions, she begins to lean on the eager Henry, who has begun dosing himself to ease the pain of his mother’s death. The transference of his attention and his devotion symbolized by giving Ana his mother’s phone to use.
Ana’s manipulations are more overt, scoring pretty much whatever she wants from Henry. At the same time, she drags him deeper into the shady world she’s quite at-home in. After a violent act by a masked assailant ends with a lucrative bag of pills stolen, Henry finds himself unwilling to escape from Ana’s orbit.
Klein nourishes the tender relationship between mother and son in the early going, with Campbell and Wolff showing how difficult it can be to protect the people you love when tragedy is imminent. Just as good is the symbiotic nature of Henry and Ana’s “friendship”, his need to care for someone crossing with her sly ability to use up others. But she’s also clearly lonely, as is Henry, so there’s the groundwork for something more tangible if only they could escape from the hold opioids has over them both.
Klein explores the many sides to these relationships through the use of blurred lighting and shadowy reflections, joined by a moody, atmospheric score by Chris Hyson that adds an ominous edge. Unfortunately, the movie is considerably less believable as Klein tumbles down into psychological-thriller territory, removing us from the grief and hurt that has bound Henry and Ana together. It comes across as a director in search of someplace for an aimless story to go, when a continued trust in his characters would’ve been enough. Their erratic journey to either recovery or doom is what Castle in the Ground should’ve kept front of mind.
The Mary J. Blige cop thriller Body Cam is, apparently, a supernatural horror. That was unclear when the project was first announced a couple of years ago, and adds an unexpected twist to the film by Imperial Dreams director Malik Vitthal that gives it a Get Out-vibe.
Blige plays a police officer who comes to realize footage of her partner’s grisly unexplained death during a routine traffic stop was captured on her body cam, and it will play for her eyes only. As attacks mount against the LAPD, she races to understand the supernatural forces driving them. The cast includes Nat Wolff, Theo Rossi, Anika Noni Rose, and David Zayas.
Vitthal is a director I’ve had my eyes on for a while, so here’s hoping this lives up to expectations. The paranormal element isn’t what I hoped for, given the authentic way he dealt with race in his prior film, but I’m intrigued to see what he does and having Blige in the lead role suggests there’s more to the script than we know.
Body Cam will be available for purchase on Digital May 19th and for rent On Demand June 2nd from Paramount Home Entertainment. The film will arrive on DVD July 14th.
Robert Downey Jr. is switching teams. Sorta. For more than a decade he was Tony Stark, the man at the heart of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. That’s over now, and Downey is taking his business over to the Distinguished Competition by adapting DC Comic Sweet Tooth as a Netflix series.
Okay, so it’s not a DC Comics superhero or anything, but instead the Vertigo comic Sweet Tooth by Jeff Lemire. Downey will produce a live-action series of Lemire’s strange comic about a half-boy, half-deer named Gus who must leave his beloved forest home to save the outside world from an apocalyptic event.
The cast being assembled for this is pretty great, too. Christian Convery (Beautiful Boy) is taking on the role of Gus, Josh Brolin will narrate the film, and they’re joined by Will Forte, and Artemis Fowl actor Nonso Anozie and The Big Sick‘s Adeel Akhtar.
Co-Showrunners are genre maestro Jim Mickle (Cold in July) and Beth Schwartz (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow), with Mickle directing the 8-episode series. Mickle directed the Hulu pilot from a few years ago, as Downey has been trying to get this off the ground for a while. So far, Downey’s only role is as a producer with no plans for him to do more. The press release describes Sweet Tooth as having “broad appeal” and being “family-friendly”, which I think is stretching things a bit. It’s a bit off the beaten path, but don’t be surprised if they lighten things up for Netflix. [THR]
First of all, in today’s world why are there different national release dates for films? Second of all, if I can be American for just a minute, if the are going to differ we should get them FIRST! Whoa, for a second there I thought I was becoming an internet troll, but worry not my urges to verbally assault Rose Tico are subsiding quickly. Marvel has announced via DigitalSpy that their UK audience will get to enjoy the much anticipated Black Widow solo film on October 28th, a week prior to the US release date of November 6th. While that opening bit was just that, a bit, I was honest about one thing…why do we have staggered openings for major releases? In a world of spoilers and piracy you’d think that the best course of action would be to fire all batteries the same weekend. That’s not even to mention that digital completely eliminated the logistical problems of global releases. There’s no coordination of shipping prints to countries all over the world…you just send a link to your distribution network and viola, global release.
Here’s the thing, we’ve already had to wait an extra six months to see the film due to the current pandemic, what’s an extra week. If the trailers are to be believed, not to mention Marvel’s track record, what ever we do have to wait, it will be worth it.
Get caught up with all of our Black Widow coverage here!
So I need to get Showtime now. It wasn’t something at all on my list until I saw Ethan Hawke doing a “nuttier than squirrel turds” take on abolitionist John Brown in The Good Lord Bird. And now it’s skyrocketed to the top of shows that simply must be seen.
The Good Lord Bird is based on the award-winning book by James McBride, and developed for TV by the folks at Blumhouse. That’s great and all, but it’s Hawke who is going to be the draw here as the gun-toting, Bible-thumping John Brown, who eventually led the infamous raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.
Hawke is joined by co-stars Daveed Diggs as Frederick Douglass, Wyatt Russell as Jeb Stuart, McKinley Belcher III, Blindspotting‘s Rafael Casal, and Joshua Caleb Johnson-Lionel as the fictional slave Onion whose perspective will guide the 7-episode series.
SYNOPSIS: Ethan Hawke stars as abolitionist John Brown in this limited series based on the National Book Award-winning novel. The story is told from the point of view of “Onion,” a fictional enslaved boy who becomes a member of Brown’s motley family of abolitionist soldiers battling slavery in Kansas, and eventually finds himself in the famous 1859 Army depot raid at Harpers Ferry, an inciting incident of the Civil War. It’s a humorous and dramatic tale of Antebellum America and the ever-changing roles of race, religion and gender in American society.
While we’ve all got July 17th and the debut of Christopher Nolan’s Tenet as the bellwether for the future viability of theatrical releases, there’s another movie with an A-list actor that will beat it by a couple of weeks. That movie is the Russell Crowe road rage thriller Unhinged, which has a new trailer that could convince audiences to come out of shelter a bit early.
Unhinged finds Russell Crowe going…well, unhinged, as a man who is pushed over the edge by an incident at a traffic light and proceeds to stalk the woman involved. Caren Pistorius (Slow West, Gloria Bell) plays Crowe’s target, with Gabriel Bateman and Jimmi Simpson co-starring. The film is directed by Derrick Borte, who made his debut in 2009 with The Joneses.
So will people show up for Unhinged when it opens on July 1st? We’ll just have to wait and see.
SYNOPSIS: Academy Award winner Russell Crowe stars in Unhinged, a timely psychological thriller that explores the fragile balance of a society pushed to the edge, taking something we’ve all experienced- road rage – to an unpredictable and terrifying conclusion. Rachel (Caren Pistorius) is running late to work when she has an altercation at a traffic light with a stranger (Crowe) whose life has left him feeling powerless and invisible. Soon, Rachel finds herself and everyone she loves the target of a man who decides to make one last mark upon the world by teaching her a series of deadly lessons. What follows is a dangerous game of cat and mouse that proves you never know just how close you are to someone who is about to become unhinged.
News on season 2 of The Mandalorian just keeps rolling in. A couple of days ago we posted about the possibility of actor Temuera Morrison playing both Boba Fett and Captain Rex, but we started by noting how the show was beginning to look more like a continuation of Star Wars Rebels and The Clone Wars. Well, that’s definitely the case with this latest update, as a character important to both is returning and played by the same actress.
Slashfilm reports that Katee Sackhoff is returning to play Bo-Katan Kryze in The Mandalorian season 2. What’s interesting about this is that Sackhoff, who many know from her time as Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica, will be one of the rare actors to bring the character she voiced into the live-action realm.
As for who Bo-Katan is, her history is a little bit complicated. She was very recently seen in concluding episodes of The Clone Wars’ final season alongside Ahsoka Tano. Bo-Katan was a leader among the Mandalorian people, ultimately becoming Mand’alor or the sole leader of the clan, and was the previous wielder of the Darksaber which we know is now in the hands of Moff Gideon.
So add Sackhoff to a growing list of new additions to The Mandalorian, along with Rosario Dawson as Ahsoka Tano, Michael Biehn as a bounty hunter, Temuera Morrison as Boba Fett, and possibly WWE superstar Sasha Banks.
In the realm of no-brainer rumors, you can add this one from The Direct which claims Michelle MacLaren is “in the mix” to direct Captain Marvel 2. Early this year the superhero sequel was dated for July 8th 2022, with Marvel hoping to land a solo female director to take over as previous directors Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck would not be returning.
I call this a no-brainer because MacLaren, who is best known for her Emmy-winning work on Breaking Bad, is mentioned for every female-led project. She had been attached to direct Wonder Woman before creative differences forced her out, only to be replaced by Patty Jenkins. MacLaren has also been listed as a contender for Sony’s potential Spider-Woman movie.
Take this with a grain of salt for now until a more reliable source chimes in. Other than Brie Larson the cast of Captain Marvel 2 has yet to be confirmed. WandaVision writer Megan McDonnell is on the screenplay which will set events in the present day.
Much like his Twilight co-star Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson has been judged almost entirely by the glittery vampire movie he made more than a decade ago. This despite a career in which he completely moved beyond mainstream studio films and began working with auteurs. That he built up an impressive resume hasn’t meant much, it seems, both to those who still think of him as the captain of Team Edward, or to studio directors looking for a blockbuster lead.
Speaking with GQ, Pattinson talks about his return to blockbuster films with Christopher Nolan’s Tenet and Matt Reeves’ The Batman, and why he’s doing so now. To hear it from him, the reason why is that he was having a hard time getting work, and for once he wanted to make a movie that people would actually see…
“I started the beginning of last year with no job,” Pattinson said. “And I was calling my agent and just being like—I had gotten good reviews in stuff—and I was like, ‘What the fuck? I thought this was a pretty good year, and I’m fucking starting the year like I’ve just done a pile of trash.’”
Pattinson continued, “The problem which I was finding was, however much I loved the movies I was doing, no one sees them. And so it’s kind of this frightening thing, ’cause I don’t know how viable this is for a career.… I don’t know how many people there actually are in the industry who are willing to back you without any commercial viability whatsoever.”
I’ve had this argument with people too many times to count. Pattinson, and Stewart for that matter, have long since proven themselves as incredibly talented actors. The problem is that nobody pays to see High Life, The Lost City of Z, and Good Time. When Pattinson was announced as the next Batman, the main criticism I heard was that he was the “Twilight guy”, which is just ridiculous. It’s funny how people will latch on to one role and never let certain actors get away from it. The irony is that neither of Pattinson’s upcoming movies is likely to be among his best performances, but they may go the longest way in changing minds about him.
Tenet is set to open on July 17th. The Batman opens October 1st 2021.
