Dee Rees put together an amazing cast for her multi Oscar-nominated drama Mudbound, and she’s looking to do the same with her followup, the Netlix political thriller The Last Thing He Wanted. Already set to star Anne Hathaway, the film now includes Ben Affleck, Rosie Perez, Toby Jones, and Edi Gathegi.
Based on the book by Joan Didion, the story centers on “a hardscrabble journalist, Elena McMahon (Hathaway), who inherits her father’s position as a dealmaker — an arms dealmaker. She soon finds herself on dangerous ground as the Iran-Contra Affair’s arms-for-drugs plot reaches its tipping point.”
Netflix is becoming a safe haven of sorts for Affleck, as he takes a break from the spotlight of DC Comics films. He’s set to star with in JC Chandor’s Triple Frontier alongside Oscar Isaac and Charlie Hunnam.
It’s unclear what roles they’ll be taking, but we know they have joined the The Last Thing He Wanted as it’s already underway. Rees co-wrote the script with Marcos Villalobos, and already this is a film worth keeping an eye on. Let’s see if Netflix decides to push this one harder than they did Mudbound. [THR]
We’re happy to offer our DC readers the chance to attend a free advance screening of The Equalizer 2, starring Denzel Washington in the first sequel of his career! Antoine Fuqua also returns to direct the big screen action flick based on the hit TV series!
SYNOPSIS: Denzel Washington returns to one of his signature roles in the first sequel of his career. Robert McCall serves an unflinching justice for the exploited and oppressed – but how far will he go when that is someone he loves?
The screening takes place on Monday, July 16th at 7:00pm at AMC Mazza Gallerie. If you’d like to enter, simply complete the Rafflecopter contest form below. Winners will be chosen on Friday, July 13th and notified by email. Good luck!
Winning the biggest award at Sundance doesn’t always translate to box office or even critical success, but it sure doesn’t hurt. The Miseducation of Cameron Post won the festival’s top prize, the Grand Jury Prize for Drama, and a cast led by Chloe Moretz, American Honey‘s Sasha Lane, and Short Term 12‘s John Gallagher Jr. There’s every reason to think it will make a huge splash, especially as it tackles one of today’s hot button issues.
Directed by Desiree Akhavan, who made an impact a couple of years ago with Appropriate Behavior, the film stars Moretz as Cameron, a young lesbian woman sent away to a gay conversion therapy center. There she encounters the center’s strict administrators who encourage repentance for their same sex attraction, but Cameron finds others inside who choose to fight against the intolerance. Jennifer Ehle, Forrest Goodluck, Emily Skeggs, and Owen Campbell co-star.
The Miseducation of Cameron Post opens August 3rd.
Pretty soon you’ll be able to watch over and over as Thanos destroys the Marvel Universe with a snap of his fingers. The digital and Blu-Ray release of Avengers: Infinity War is right around the corner, and today we have the trailer along with a full list of special features.
Chances are Infinity War will still be in theaters when it arrives digitally on July 31st (preordert it here), and possibly even when the Blu-Ray/DVD combo packs hit shelves on August 7th. Those who pre-order the digital version will be treated to an exclusive featurette with MCU directors Anthony and Joe Russo (Avengers: Infinity War), Jon Favreau (Iron Man), Joss Whedon (The Avengers), James Gunn (Guardians of the Galaxy), Ryan Coogler (Black Panther), Peyton Reed (Ant-Man) and Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) discussing their contributions to the MCU. Other features include behind-the-scenes featurettes, deleted scenes, gag reels, and audio commentary.
Strange Alchemy (5:08)– Share the thrill of characters from across the MCU meeting for the first time—and discover why some were teamed up together.
The Mad Titan (6:34) – Explore the MCU’s biggest, baddest villain, his trail of influence through the stories, and the existential threat he represents.
Beyond the Battle: Titan (9:36) – Dive into the climactic struggle on Thanos’ ruined world, including the epic stunts and VFX, to uncover the source of its power.
Beyond the Battle: Wakanda (10:58) – Go behind the scenes to find out how the filmmakers pulled off the most massive and challenging battle Marvel had ever attempted.
Deleted and Extended Scenes (10:07)
Happy Knows Best (1:23) – Tony and Pepper spar over the details of their upcoming wedding—until a hassled Happy Hogan pulls up with an urgent request.
Hunt for the Mind Stone (1:24) – On a darkened street, Wanda Maximoff and the wounded Vision attempt to hide from Thanos’ brutal allies.
The Guardians Get Their Groove Back (3:20) – As Peter Quill and Drax quarrel over their failed mission to Knowhere, Mantis interrupts with news.
A Father’s Choice (4:00) – Thanos confronts Gamora with a vision from her past—and with lying to him about the Soul Stone.
Gag Reel (2:05)– Watch your favorite Super Heroes make super gaffes in this lighthearted collection of on-set antics.
Audio Commentary (approx. 149 min.) by Anthony and Joe Russo, Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely
Shazam is expected to be one of the major films presented by Warner Bros. at Comic-Con next week, with a trailer likely to be part of the show. The cast will likely show up, as well, and if so we might see Oscar nominee Djimon Hounsou hit the stage with them because we’re learning that he has a pretty important role.
Hounsou has apparently been part of the cast for a while and we’re only just learning about it now. With Zachary Levi as the titular superhero, Hounsou will be playing the 3,000-year-old wizard who gives young Billy Batson (Asher Angel) the power to transform into Shazam and battle evil. The role was originally set for character actor Ron Cephas Jones but no deal was ever struck.
It’s unclear how big Hounsou’s role will be, but one thing he’s proven over the years is that he doesn’t need long to make an impression. This also makes him one of the few actors to play significant characters in both the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe. He appeared as Korath in Guardians of the Galaxy and will reprise that role in next year’s Captain Marvel.
How can you make a Winnie the Pooh movie that isn’t fun? The previous teasers for Christopher Robin were certainly wondrous, but fun it definitely wasn’t, choosing instead to focus on the story’s dramatic aspects. Fortunately, that’s corrected in this latest trailer which features more of Pooh and his pals from the Hundred Acre Wood.
Directed by Marc Forster and starring Ewan McGregor as the grown-up Christopher Robin, who is overwhelmed by the responsibilities of adulthood. He’s lost his sense of imagination, until he encounters his old friend Pooh, who along with the other stuffed animals help Christopher Robin find his inner child again. This looks positively charming, as Robin and his animal pals run free in the forests Where the Wild Things Are style. If only they could find a way to crossover with Paddington it’d be perfect.
Here’s the official synopsis: In the heartwarming live action adventure Disney’s “Christopher Robin,” the young boy who shared countless adventures with his band of lovable stuffed animals in the Hundred Acre Wood is now grown up and living in London but he has lost his way. Now it is up to his childhood friends to venture into our world and help Christopher Robin rediscover the joys of family life, the value of friendship and to appreciate the simple pleasures in life once again.
Starring Hayley Atwell, Mark Gatiss, and the voices of Jim Cummings, Brad Garrett, Peter Capaldi, Toby Jones, Sophie Okenedo, and Nick Mohammed, Christopher Robin opens August 3rd.
There’s very little of the shock and awe Rob Reiner hoped to inspire in his docudrama Shock and Awe, the latest in a growing group of movies extolling the virtues of hard-hitting journalism as a check on governmental propaganda. In an era in which the President tweets #fakenews on a daily basis, and an entire TV “news” network helps him turn it into policy, it’s disappointing to have Reiner, a fierce liberal activist and pundit, direct such a middling film. Worse still because the pieces to make a great film are there, minus the passion and raw directorial talent o see it through.
Similar to Reiner’s recent foray into political drama with LBJ, the fire is missing and we’re left wondering what happened to the impassioned director of A Few Good Men and The American President? With Shock and Awe he’s simply content to follow in the well-worn shoes of All the President’s Men in paint-by-numbers style. It begins in cliché fashion (and never really stops being as such) as a wheelchair-bound Iraq War vet addresses the senatorial Veterans Affairs committee, only to theatrically put away his notes so that he can talk from the heart. His speech, however, is full of stats and figures about the true cost of a war built on lies and propaganda. The screenplay by Joey Hartstone never misses an opportunity to cram in as much data as possible in place of actual human emotion.
That said, there is still a powerful story here if you can look past the workmanlike direction. Woody Harrelson and James Marsden swoop in to the rescue as dogged Knight Ridder reporters Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel. They are among the very few who stand against the Bush Administration’s public campaign to turn responsibility for 9/11 away from Osama Bin Laden and instead to Saddam Hussein. As Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powel and other senior Bush officials jin up the case for war with a bogus claim of WMD, too many in the press just went along with the Administration’s talking points. With the enthusiastic support of their boss John Walcott (Reiner, in one of his best acting roles) and veteran war journalist Joe Galloway (Tommy Lee Jones) in their corner, Landay and Strobel hit the phones, put shoe leather to pavement, and do the hard work in debunking what is quickly becoming the popular narrative. But despite all of their accurate reporting, and even getting one source to boldly state “Donald Rumsfeld is lying”, Knight Ridder was criticized and saw many papers refuse to print their syndicated pieces in favor of disgraced Bush cheerleader Judith Miller of the New York Times. It’s worth noting Miller and the Times both apologized later for their shoddy reporting.
The firebrand pundit Reiner is on TV never translates into his work as a filmmaker, where he is painfully muted. Reiner would probably tell you he’s a storyteller first, and I get that, but storytelling without conviction is basically reading Wikipedia, and that’s too often what this movie feels like. Some confusing choices are made to flesh out the lives of the Knight Ridder journos, and they both involve significant others played by Milla Jojovich and Jessica Biel. The latter gets mixed up in a dorky ill-suited rom-com subplot that finds Strobel meeting her first as his neighbor, then on an awkward blind date. What this adds to the narrative is never really clear, other than a scene where she gets to witness Strobel’s mounting frustration over news coverage. And for what reason do we care that Landay has a Balkan wife who is as up on politics as he is? At one point she does express some justifiable fear over the death threats he is receiving, but then that plot thread is dropped never to be picked up. What was the purpose? The effect is to cloud Reiner’s message and lessen the impact of the film’s few striking moments.
Maybe this was Reiner’s way of making Shock and Awe more palatable, because certainly the American audience has shown no appetite for revisiting this subject and that’s not likely to change. Perhaps Reiner will find a more willing audience for it internationally, while there is growing discontent with our country’s place on the world stage.
An ensemble love story that spans generations? Better call Dan Fogelman! The creator of phenom TV series This Is Us (The one that has all your friends in tears each week) is bringing his talent for multigenerational romantic drama to the silver screen with Life Itself, and the first trailer for it is here.
Starring Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Mandy Patinkin, Laia Costa, Olivia Cooke, Annette Bening, Samuel L. Jackson, and Antonio Banderas, the film follows the intersecting stories of people in New York and Spain across generations. One look at the trailer will probably have This Is Us regulars swooning, but Fogelman isn’t making it easy to figure out the catalyzing event that connects his characters.
Here is the official synopsis: As a young New York couple goes from college romance to marriage and the birth of their first child, the unexpected twists of their journey create reverberations that echo over continents and through lifetimes in Life Itself. Director and writer Dan Fogelman (“This Is Us”) examines the perils and rewards of everyday life in a multigenerational saga featuring an international ensemble including Oscar Isaac, Olivia Wilde, Antonio Banderas, Annette Bening, Olivia Cooke, Sergio Peris- Mencheta, Laia Costa, Alex Monner and Mandy Patinkin. Set in New York City and Carmona, Spain, Life Itself celebrates the human condition and all of its complications with humor, poignancy and love.
Before yesterday I had completely forgotten Paramount and Nickelodeon’s new animated film Wonder Park. Now having watched the trailer I still have no idea what it’s about. It kinda looks like a bunch of humans were kidnapped and taken to a mysterious amusement park that appears out of thin air and is run by animals. It’s like Tomorrowland meets that CBS series, Zoo.
Actually, that might be more of an accurate description than expected because the film comes from producers Josh Appelbaum and Andre Nemec, who created Zoo in the first place. And sure enough Wonder Park, or “Wonderland” as it’s strangely referred to in the teaser trailer, is staffed by talking animals. Will they eventually be feasting on these unsuspecting human visitors? It’s not like they paid the price of admission or anything. They apparently sprung from the mind of a little girl named June.
Here’s the movie’s super vague synopsis, which also suggests something sinister is afoot: “Wonder Park tells the story of a magnificent amusement park where the imagination of a wildly creative girl named June comes alive.”
Lastly, this is one of those animated flicks with no clear director. That’s just spooky, it’s like this thing was willed into existence, just like the park itself. In reality the original director Dylan Brown was fired over “inappropriate and unwanted conduct”, and was never replaced. Again, that’s just spooky. It’s like his spirit lingers in the editing booth. Also canned from the film? Jeffrey Tambor, whose history of misconduct is well-documented enough that I don’t need to go into it.
The voice cast is pretty good, though, led by Jennifer Garner, Mila Kunis, Ken Jeong, Matthew Broderick, and Kenan Thompson. Wonder Park opens March 15th 2019 and will then launch a new TV series like any self-respecting Nickelodeon movie should.
*UPDATE: It’s official! Deadline has confirmed Jeremy Renner for the role of detective “Twitch” Williams in Todd McFarlane’s Spawn. He joins Jamie Foxx, who will play the demonic Hellspawn who comes to rely on Williams’ smarts and intuition to aid in the fight against evil. Original story is below!*
Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye has probably had the least to do of any Avenger, but if the latest rumor from That Hashtag Show is true, he’s about to take on a different comic book role with more screen time. The site reports Renner is in talks to join Todd McFarlane’s Spawn movie, taking on the role of detective Twitch Williams.
Twitch Williams is one of the human detectives, along with his loyal partner Sam Burke, investigating the weird happenings around Al Simmons, the human alter ego of Spawn. The Sam and Twitch duo were so popular from their appearances in the Spawn comic they eventually were spun into their own series. The role of Twitch would make Renner the human lead of the film, although Jamie Foxx is still on board as the title character. Spawn isn’t expected to be on screen much as McFarlane goes for a less-is-more approach to the demonic antihero.
Of course, we should consider the source on this one. If there’s any kind of confirmation we’ll be sure to give an update. Renner can be seen now in the comedy Tag, and he’ll return as Hawkeye (or Ronin?) in next year’s Avengers 4.
